The April edition of Poetry contained an essay in the form of two reviews about public poetry by the New York Times‘ David Orr. Similarly, Julia Baird questioned the proper role of a public poet in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Both authors primarily view the public poet as being, in effect, a public intellectual and activist. Baird criticizes W.S. Merwin’s stewardship of the U.S. Poet Laureateship on the grounds that the elderly and physically retiring Merwin (who does not often leave his Hawaiian estate) would not bring what Baird sees as a necessary activism.  She similarly suggests that his predecessor, Kay Ryan, was too emotionally retiring to be effective.

Orr reviewed four collections that he believes correspond or attempt to correspond with his view of public poetry. The thread connecting these books is political engagement.

Baird also sees the type of engagement called for by our poet laureates as political. He singles out the Russian expatriate who become the U.S. Poet Laureate, Joseph Brodsky, as the ideal – and specifically references how Brodsky called himself a “poet activist.” The other laureates he mentions, he notes the particular socio-politico issue they tackled.

Absent from this list is Robert Pinsky, who did more than poet laureate I remember to evangelize poetry.

Neither of these two see a public poet as one who necessarily tries to expand the reach of poetry among the reading public, but rather, as I said earlier, as being simply a public intellectual who happened to earn their public perch through poetry.

While I love the idea of the public intellectual, surely we can have a view of the public poet as different from a Cornel West-like  figure who happens to write poetry?