Fair Deal

There's a lot of talk online these days about what role the U.S. Poet Laureate should assume.

Technically, the job is to be an adviser (-or?) to the Librarian of Congress, who appoints the laureate for, I think, a year. So, there's a lot of room for different approaches, it would seem.

Not being in academe, I am out of the loop on this one, because most published poets hereabouts are college professors. Though I do read a few things from time to time, I really have no idea how previous poets laureate have dealt with the post.

However, it seems that our art is making a comeback of sorts as a part of the general uptick in "spoken word" performance. (This is a recession, and the tickets are usually a lot cheaper than, say, a rock concert by a national act.)

So, "ride the wave" would be one approach, it seems.

But, of the many things written about the current laureate, one bit sticks with me -- and, I am sad to say, in an embarrassed way.

You see, I used to think the typewriter killed poems. No, really, that's what I thought: you could compose one in your head or write it down by hand, but once you typed it, you killed it.

OK, this was a very long time ago, and I soon went to typing my final drafts long before personal computers dropped below a grand, making that chore a cinch. Having been a journalist of one sort or another for many years, banging on a manual typewriter was natural for me, so that's what I did.

However, W.S. Merwin, according to one bio, still writes his final drafts by hand -- whether block print or cursive, I know not -- and has for many years.

This practice has a name: it's called making a "fair copy." That is to say, "fair" as in "readable" or "legible."

What makes this a deal for the poet laureate's role I can't say, except that it seems to be one commonplace thing that can bring us one step closer to the common root of our art.

I'm going to go back to making fair copies just as soon as I can. I've killed enough poems already.