Per Verse

A few weeks ago, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty set tongues wagging
when he vetoed a bill that would have created a state poet laureate.
The position would have required no public funding, but would have
acknowledged a longstanding tradition that is observed by thirty-three
other states and the federal government. In a world of civil compromise
and checks and balances, titles matter. Even when they are strictly
ceremonial, they reflect the public’s values and its will. By the time
they land under the governor’s pen, they are not frivolous. Thus many
people saw the guber’s gesture as a blatant middle finger directed at
poetry specifically, the arts in general, and even at the state
Legislature at large, which had voted overwhelmingly for passage.

Displaying an alarming aptitude for both arrogance and ignorance in one
deft move, the governor seemed to say he has no interest in the arts,
and that he considers interpretive dance and pottery to be good punch
lines. Of course, Mr. Pawlenty has received the ridicule he deserves.
Who would defend such pointless boorishness? But it is worth
considering how the normally nimble, boyish politician developed this
blind spot. It was an involuntary expression of the contempt certain
people have for anything that isn’t written on a spreadsheet.

To a person like that, poetry is frivolous mainly because no one gets
rich writing it, reading it, or selling it. Compared to doing real work
like, say, consulting with telecommunications companies and
test-driving ATVs, poetry is sloth at best, elitist narcissism at
worst. Regular, honest people like James Lileks have no truck with
poetry. If God thought poetry a virtuous human activity, he would have
proven it by making poets rich and Republican. Also, Psalms would have
been written in iambic pentameter.

True, it would be unfair to impugn the governor’s party. Republican
Barb Sykora of Excelsior was one of the poet laureate’s key sponsors,
and red-blooded Republicans in both houses voted with their effete
Democratic rivals. In fact, this bill provided a rare moment of
agreement in an otherwise contentious legislative session. Until it
reached the governor, the whole episode was the mirror image of last
year, when inexperienced lawmakers deliberately introduced contentious
sallies into reverse-engineering on social issues—through stunts like
reintroducing the death penalty and constitutionally banning gay
marriage, issues that have no value other than their power to divide.
On the contrary, the bill to institute a poet laureate not only brought
everyone to the table, but gave a symbolic nod to the highest
expressions of civilization. It was a noble, positive gesture met by a
graceless, negative one.

There was something perversely exciting about Mr. Pawlenty’s
imperiousness—that Minnesota will have no state poet laureate merely
because Mr. Pawlenty does not see any merit in poetry. In these times,
values are always confused with value. Every public conversation is
dominated by a paradigm of “return on investment” and “relief” from the
burdens of public expenditure. But even these have become disingenuous
arguments, because there is no longer any true impulse of conservation
among state and national leaders who gaily pass the costs of civil
society down to cities and counties, and from there on down to our
grandchildren. By these arguments, the arts have always been a favorite
bogeyman of the accountant and the utilitarian. The romantic myth of
the starving, parasitic artist has numerous beneficiaries, but it is a
myth that needs permanent debunking.

A person who lives and works in the Twin Cities cannot fail to see the
value of the arts in our community. Despite the rumor, it is a resource
that can be measured at the cash register. St. Paul receives six
hundred million dollars each year from patrons of the arts. In
Minneapolis, more than 110 arts organizations draw nearly five million
visitors and audience members each year. The arts have created nearly
ten thousand full-time jobs in the City of Lakes. They generate eight
million dollars annually for the city’s coffers, and nineteen million dollars
in state revenues. So when our leaders say they cannot afford to invest
in the arts, they have the rhetoric exactly backward. The arts can no
longer afford to invest in them.