The unexpected dividends of the county’s poet laureate program
He strolls into The Beat while talking to a Beat — Bruce Isaacson is on the phone with famed San Fran poet Michael McClure as he bops into the Downtown coffeehouse, still ebullient after chatting up some college profs about the physics of a consciously designed universe. As one does, if one’s the Clark County poet laureate, as Isaacson is. Having not missed his Beat, Isaacson hangs up and is ready for this, his Desert Companion close-up, a few more column inches of progress in his tireless march toward a richer poetic life for all of us.
That connectivity with poets of McClure’s stature has helped Isaacson make more than expected of what’s normally a ceremonial position. “We thought the poet would read poems at a few public occasions,” says Patrick Gaffey, director of the county’s Winchester Cultural Center. “Bruce took all of us by surprise.”
After his appointment last June, he quickly brought in then-new U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, whom Isaacson knew from the Bay Area poetry scene. The nation’s first Hispanic poet laureate, Herrera is the sort of big-stage figure you might expect to visit Vegas through a more established venue of literary presentation — the library district, UNLV. His appearance “has set the bar high for Bruce’s interpretation of a poet laureate’s duties,” says writer Ed Fuentes, who first floated the idea of a county poet. McClure, a Beat Movement mainstay who came in April, was another big get — again, a poet Isaacson knew. As Fuentes notes, “Bruce has been in Vegas long enough to be localized, while having the life experience of a West Coast poet.” (The big-deal visits continue August 27 with national slam-poetry star Patricia Smith.)
Meanwhile, his well-attended open readings and workshops at Winchester are, Fuentes says, “becoming poetry mini-pilgrimages.” He’s editing an anthology of local poetry, possibly out this winter. “We won’t be exhaustive,” he says, “but I hope we will be representative.” And his inaugural Poetry Promise Award was recently bestowed upon teenager Lisa Brissette (who’ll read at The Beat on June 4). Thanks to her $500 prize, Brissette has earned $500 more from the county poet laureate program than the laureate himself, who’s done all this for free.
“I’m not the smartest guy in the universe,” Isaacson says. “But I’m devoted.”
“Herrera and McClure were hugely important events that brought out hundreds of people,” Gaffey says. “At Herrera’s workshop a man said to me, ‘I’m from out of town. Can you tell me what event this is?’ I did, and he said, ‘You got this many people out for a poetry event? This town must be full of intellectuals!’”
“This community is ready,” Isaacson says. “I’ve been saying I thought it could happen for 10 years.”
As he begins the second year of his two-year term, he proposes not merely to continue the momentum, but to up his ambition. He plans to push for a version of California’s Poets in Schools program, which would pay poets to visit classrooms to supplement writing instruction. No doubt you caught the key word in that sentence. “I won’t do the program unless the poets get paid,” he says, hopeful but realistic: “We’ll see how far we get with all these ambitious things.”
As for why Vegas is having a poetry moment now, Isaacson isn’t sure. He name-checks local poets — Vogue Robinson, Syd Stewart, Lee Mallory — who’ve cultivated new audiences. There’s some fine slam-poetry action, he allows. Perhaps this town really is full of intellectuals. And maybe the why matters less than the simple fact of progress.
“I’m one of those people who believe the human condition advances,” he says, “that we’re moving forward, that it’s not all just utter, pointless repetition.” Word.