Just what does a Poet Laureate do?

I was looking over the works of W.S. Merwin the other day and it occurred to me that I’m not sure exactly what a U.S. Poet Laureate is supposed to do. Maybe the trouble is that there is no set responsibilities laid out by the Library of Congress. Perhaps there should be.
Merwin was named the country’s 17th poet laureate last week replacing the outgoing Kay Ryan. I’m not suggesting this is a bad choice. Merwin certainly deserves the honor. Born in New York City in 1927, a currently residing in Hawaii, Merwin has won just about everything a poet can, including two Pulitzer’s, the National Book Award,  a Governor’s Award, the Pen Translation Prize and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award.
He is part of a great group of modern poets, all born around the same time, a contemporary of Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg. And like those poets, his most influential work (mostly about the Vietnam War) came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including The Carrier of Ladders, which won him his first Pulitzer.
His second Pulitzer came just last year, for The Shadow of Sirius, a somewhat perplexing collection about memory and age and the limits of life. In fact, much of Merwin’s later work involves the theme of memory, and time – likely an influence of his affinity of Eastern tradition and an almost Zen-like introspection of work.
In one lovely piece from The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin reflects on his own poetry, but of course “Worn Words” is an allegory to his own later years: “The poems are the ones / I turn to first now / finding a hope that keeps / beckoning me.”
Still, just a year after winning the Pulitzer, after having served as a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, and being of a certain age, the Laureateship feels more like a final reward than an actual, active job, at least in Merwin’s case.
In a New York Times story on the announcement, Dana Gioia, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said that Merwin was “an inevitable choice” for poet laureate implying that if a poet can just last long enough the award will be his.
That hasn’t always been the case. Robert Pinsky was in his 50s when he was Poet Laureate from 1997-2002 as was Billy Collins, 2001-2003. But the role of the laureate has always been a bit mysterious.
First, the laureate receives $35,000. At one time, that was a lot of money and could conceivably allow the poet to dedicate the rest of his life to his art. Now, that amount is just a stipend.
The poet is also given the responsibility of overseeing an ongoing series of poetry readings at the Library of Congress.  Not a bad gig, but in reality the poets don’t have the time or money to go shipping back and forth to Washington. Merwin isn’t going to be leaving Hawaii anytime too soon, so the readings will ultimately be put on by the library in the poet’s name.
Other than that, the poet’s are charged with “promoting poetry.” Given that promoting poetry is something they have likely already been doing for most of their lives, that responsibility just plain seems silly.
So, here’s a suggestion: how about the Library of Congress actually become a patron of the chosen poet. Instead of just throwing a couple bucks at him and setting him off to promote poetry, the Library should promote the poet itself – like a publisher would or a promoter. They are already giving him $35,000, why not use that money to promote his books? After all, if the poet is ostensibly picked because he’s done so much good for poetry, why not take that poet public so to speak.  Wouldn’t that do more to bring these great voices to the public? Let’s face it, local poetry presses are usually universities to begin with and they can’t push a poet’s work like a Random House can.
Poets and the institutions that highlight them like the Library of Congress need to break out of the self-masturbatory trap of promoting poetry from within. All this glad-handing does little other than stroke a poet’s ego. Let me ask you this: W.S. Merwin, arguably one of our greatest living poets has been writing and publishing since 1952. Have you heard of him? Maybe the Library of Congress should stop handing out rewards and start promoting their poets before they are 82 years old.
W.S. Merwin has published more than 30 books of prose and collections of poetry, along with about 2 dozen translations. Here’s a short list of his best:
The First Four Books of Poems (2000) Merwin’s first four books individually are hard to find. Try this instead.  It includes A Mask for Janus (1952), The Dancing Bears (1954), Green with Beasts (1956), and The Drunk in the Furnace (1960). Merwin’s early work is moving, raw and highly expressive.
The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (2000) The collection brings together Merwin’s most accomplished works, including his Vietnam books and The Carrier of Ladders, which won his first Pulitzer Prize.
The Shadow of Sirius (2009) – No punctuation and a single first capital letter. Merwin is seasoned here and this time-themed collection is both elegant and weighty. He won his second Pulitzer for this collection.