“There’s a great deal of American poetry that’s hardly known and that should be known
(CBS/AP) NEW YORK – When you heard that Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine was appointed America’s new poet laureate, you probably wondered just what a poet laureate does. Well, for starters, he – or she – receives $35,000 and is known officially from October through May as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the U.S. The laureate has few official duties and poets before Levine have used the job to pursue a range of personal projects. For example, Billy Collins (2001-2003) started the Poetry 180 program which encourages the reading of verse in high school. The 180 refers to the 180 poems Collins selected for the program. Collins also wrote a poem to commemorate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and read it aloud at a special joint session of Congress on Sept 6, 2002. Another previous poet laureate, Robert Hass (1995-1997) went around the country lecturing on poetry and ecological awareness and organized a nationwide “Watershed” conference on nature writing. He also wrote a column about poetry for the Washington Post. What is Levine planning? “I don’t want to overextend myself, but at the same time I would like to use the ‘bully pulpit,’ as they call it, to bring attention to some of my concerns,” the 83-year-old poet told the Associated Press. “There’s a great deal of American poetry that’s hardly known and that should be known....
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