''Welcome unacknowledged legislators of the world,'' Maxine Kumin cried, borrowing from Shelley, at the first-ever convention of state poets laureate at the Highlander Inn here, next to the airport.
The poets laureate -- some are ''state writers'' -- had gathered under the auspices of the New Hampshire Writers' Project to talk about ''Poetry and Politics.'' There were 14 present, plus two emeriti, including Ms. Kumin, a former poet laureate of New Hampshire and a former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the previous title of the nation's poet laureate). And the group was cheered on by an audience of some 200, among them teachers, librarians and other poets.
The poets laureate came in all stripes and measures of fame. There was Larry Woiwode, poet laureate of North Dakota, who is also an acclaimed novelist, and Jim Irons, poet laureate of Idaho, a former firefighter and former sportswriter for The Idaho Statesman who has never published a book, though his poetry has been in anthologies.
There was Ellen Kort, Wisconsin's poet laureate, who carries glow-in-the-dark chalk so she can write poems on sidewalks; Marie Harris of New Hampshire, who said she believed in being seen taking out the garbage so that others would understand that poets are ordinary people, too; and Maggi Vaughn of Tennessee, a determined populist with a booming voice. ''They want a poet of the people,'' she said of the position, ''someone who can go to the crossroads and big cities, and people will understand.''
''I learned a lot from country music,'' Ms. Vaughn said. ''If you write poetry people relate to, they will buy books.''
Forty states and the District of Columbia have poets laureate or state writers. Thirty-one positions are currently filled. Usually the poet is chosen by the governor, and for the most part ''it is a job without a description and without compensation,'' Ms. Harris said. It is not always without notice, though; among those not attending was Amiri Baraka, the New Jersey laureate, whose poem suggesting that Israel knew in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks was widely denounced. He was invited but was ''missing in action,'' said Katie Goodman, the executive director of the New Hampshire Writers' Project.
There was an aura of self-congratulation about the conference, with many of the poets extolling what they said was poetry's newfound power. Many said the best thing that ever happened to them was the postponement by the first lady, Laura Bush, of a White House poetry conference this year after she learned that the invited poets were sending antiwar poems to one of the scheduled participants, Sam Hamill, who was organizing a protest. ''Ever since Laura Bush, my readings have been crowded,'' said Grace Paley, poet laureate of Vermont and, at 80, a rabble-rouser. ''Even if they're not about the war, they've been crowded.''
The Internet has also given poetry new life. In the days after Sept. 11, a huge number of poems flew over the Internet as people tried to assuage their grief. The poets also attributed the new interest to the Favorite Poem Project, an audiovisual archive of people reading favorite poems that was founded by Robert Pinsky in 1997 when he was poet laureate of the United States, and to Russell Simmons's ''Def Poetry'' on HBO and on Broadway. There was little talk about how poetry is regarded as a money-losing proposition by most publishers, or how many small presses that publish poetry have folded.
On Friday the poets fanned out across the state, giving free readings at libraries, schools and community centers. Marilyn Nelson of Connecticut, who auctions off her poetry and donates the proceeds to nonprofit organizations, read ''Epithalamium and Shivaree,'' composed for the commitment ceremony of two women:
All Cana was abuzz next day with stories:
Some said it was a sad aftertaste; some said
its sweetness made them ache with thirst.
Years later those who had been there
spoke of it with closed eyes, and swayed.
David Allan Evans of South Dakota read a sports poem, ''Pole Vaulter'':
The approach to the bar
is everything
unless I have counted my steps hit my markers
feel up to it I refuse
to follow through.
On Saturday the poets got down to business in a series of panels, including ''Poets and Politicians,'' ''The Poet as Citizen'' and ''Poetry and the Community.'' At the panel on ''Poets and Politicians,'' a member of the audience objected to the high-flown language being used at the conference. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s biblical references, for instance, were cited as examples of poetry that inspired people toward social justice. ''I'm finding this event curiously nonpolitical,'' the woman said. ''Martin Luther King didn't just spout poetry and racism was finished.''
Mr. Woiwode countered that poetry was crucially inspirational. The American Indians living near him in North Dakota ''get stirred up when Martin Luther King is heard,'' he said. Another questioner wondered, ''I want to know how to get a poem to Condoleezza Rice?'' No one had an answer.
One panel, ''Poetry and the Spirit'' was moderated by John Fox, who teaches at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif., and practices poetry therapy. ''When the soul wants to express something,'' he said, ''she throws an image out in front of her.''
On Saturday night came the gala dinner at the Manchester Holiday Inn. Ms. Harris, the New Hampshire laureate, who is often asked to write poems for public events, read from her poem about the minting of the New Hampshire quarter:
But even gussied up, the quarter's still
a common coin, clinking in the pockets
of poor and rich alike, a coin with which
to buy time for a load or two of laundry.
She also read one written for the University of New Hampshire's agricultural sustainability conference in which she called for ''sun and rain in proper measure.''
The night's main speaker was the poet Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Gioia avoided the evening's main theme, poetry and politics. At a news conference he was asked about the postponed White House event and said he had no comment. As for politics and poetry in general, he said, when poetry is read ''only as conceptual, ideological speech, it diminishes its role as art.''
Like the poets before him, Mr. Gioia spoke of poetry's resurgence. ''This enormous reawakening is now an undeniable fact of contemporary American cultural life,'' he said. In Northern California, where he is from, he said, ''you cannot swing a cat without encountering a poet laureate.''
