Yes, it’s true: one of our favorite columnists and sometime-radio host has dropped the B-bomb. Yeah, sure, she’s going for humor here, but still. Honestly. Really. Isn’t there a way to insult women’s fiction without implying violence toward females? We renew our plea for new press stylebooks and journalistic creativity.
With an official state dirt, a state fossil and a state tartan, we need a state bard. And as a blue state, it’s our obligation to demonstrate that airport bookstore thrillers and bodice-rippers are not the alpha and omega of literature and that just because poetry usually comes in slim volumes with even slimmer royalty checks doesn’t mean it don’t kick heinie
We do acknowledge the Morrison gets the bigger story:
Quite possibly the governor or some rich pal could step up and volunteer a few bucks. It’s a crummy mixed message about art and literacy in a nation that rewards what it regards most highly. The nation’s poet laureate gets a $35,000 stipend, which is low-end income even for a Manhattan dog walker. Britain’s poet laureate receives wine; couldn’t Napa Valley spare a jeroboam for bragging rights as “the official syrah of the poet laureate of California”?
On a related, but unrelated, topic, Montana has joined in on the “pay writers?” bandwagon. If you think the pay for a poet laureate in California is low, Montana saw it as the going rate. So, yeah, two poet laureate positions are open. With one you get sunshine, with the other you get wide open spaces (and, we presume, snow or something similar). Also a shiny badge and maybe your name in the paper.
If the press hasn’t used up all available ink covering the hiring process.
