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Who Was the First Poet Laureate?

Posted: Friday, October 03, 2008

by Tex Norman

America's first Poet Laureate Joseph Auslander served from 1937-1941 Mr. Auslander was born in 1897 and died in 1965. Auslander, was born in Philadelphia and graduated Harvard College. There may have been better Poets Laureate, but Mr. Auslander was the first one, appointed in 1937. Actually our first Poet Laureate was originally called the first Consultant in Poetry, and with his appointment there were no term limits which explains how he happened to serve for four years. Mr. Auslander was noted for his war poems.

The works of Mr. Auslander included the following:

Sunrise Trumpets. New York: Harper, 1924
Cyclops' Eye. New York: Harper, 1926
The Winged Horse (with Frank Ernest Hill). New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1927.
The Winged Horse Anthology (with Frank Ernest Hill). New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1939.
The Unconquerables: Salutes to the Undying Spirit of the Nazi-Occupied Countries. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943.

Perhaps Mr. Auslander's best-known work is entitled "The Unconquerables" (1943), a collection of poems addressed to the German-occupied countries of Europe.

Here is an example of the work of our first Poet Laureate:

To My Despoiler byJoseph Auslander

Yes, you have taken everything from me:
Beauty and love and all the measureless
Impatience of proud April; even our sea
Shouting under the gulls; all loveliness
Of form and sound and colour; all that we
Had touched; the curve of things we used to press
Glowing against our senses; mystery
And movement. . . everything taken. . . taken. . . Yes,
Even the little brave irrelevancies
Like brooding water, dripping water-cress,
The cool dark noise of cropping; cruising bees
On hot gold expeditions--even these
You took from me--Oh spare me your caress,
Leave me at least my own stark loneliness!

Tex Norman is a social worker, currently working at the Oklahoma DHS Abuse and Neglect hotline. He interviews people reporting abuse and/or neglect of children and vulnerable adults and writes a narrative. The narratives (and demographics) are used to initiate investigations of the allegations. He says it is like writing 8 to 10 stories a day. In August 2012, he will have been married to Kathie for 40 years. He has a son Ryan who earned a PhD from Princeton and he is now a scientist doing research in molecular biology. Tex spends his free time working as an artist and writer. He has one art site, and a blog that might be of interest: http://tex-norman.artistwebsites.com/ and http://collagepoetrybytex.blogspot.com/

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