[New-Poetry] Re: laureate

[Roger Day]

I thought the modern English poet laureate is a modern parallel of a
court jester, silk ties not withstanding.

Roger

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 8:52 PM, Robin Hamilton
<robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>
> I've been brooding over this, and a couple of things I came up with are ...
>
>         Is a Poet Laureate Hot Dog or Top Dog?
>
> ... and ...
>
>     The closest analogy to the position(s) of poet laureate are religious --
> Roman Catholic, Anglican Compromise, or Presbyterian.
>
> It's all to do with wreaths, i'ntit?  The palm, the oak, the bays ...  You
> tramp on a town (delendo est Carthago) and you get an oak wreath, you win
> the marathon at the Olympics (without the use of steroids) and you're
> awarded the palm.  Hot dog poets get the laurel wreath ...
>
>         [After the 14thC in Europe ...  late entrants.]
>
> Interesting that the earliest European laureates were -- Petrarch and
> Skelton -- both self-crowned.
>
>         ... so the poetic crown pickabacks on genocide.  (Oak wreaths before
> laurel leaves.)
>
> So far so good -- Petrarch and Skelton might both have been egotistical
> buggers but they did get it right -- no one would quarrel with their
> self-choice.
>
> But it's when you institutionalise the business that problems start.
>
> Ben Jonson was probably partly self-appointed and partly lion-on-the-egg
> stamped by Jimmy the Sixth and One.
>
> But once he's there, you *have to have a poet laureate.
>
> Like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury ...
>
> Since Jonson, the *English laureateship has been the obvious mingled with
> the hysterically funny.
>
>         But you have to have one, until the previous one dies.
>
> From that perspective, the appointment of Andrew Motion actually makes a
> weird kind of sense -- you don't have to choose between Heaney, Wallcott,
> Harrison, and Fanthorpe-- put in a place marker, and hope when he dies,
> there'll be an Obvious Candidate.
>
> Mark on the ballot paper, "None of the above."
>
> So the English Laureateship is tending to the Anglican Compromise -- they
> don't have to die, but may resign.
>
> The Church of Scotland, truly democratic, primus inter pares, elects a new
> Moderator every (or is it three?) years.
>
> Which is fine, unless you're a member of the Wee Free or the Plymouth
> Betheren.
>
> All shall take part, and many shall have prizes.
>
> The American System seeems to be closest to the Presbyterian Communion.
>
> Which is fine and Deeply Democratic, but please don't usurp the term
> "laureate".
>
> R.
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