{"id":3521,"date":"2019-06-10T07:13:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T11:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/?p=3521"},"modified":"2019-06-10T07:13:13","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T11:13:13","slug":"vt-to-drop-poet-laureate-in-favor-of-state-calliopist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/10\/vt-to-drop-poet-laureate-in-favor-of-state-calliopist\/","title":{"rendered":"VT to Drop Poet Laureate in Favor of State Calliopist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>GROTON &#8211; In\na stunning move shocking the literary world, Vt. Senate President pro-tem Tim\nAshe and House Leader Mitzi Johnson called an emergency session of the Vermont\nlegislature and succeeded in permanently ousting the state poet laureate. In\nits stead, Ashe, Johnson and the legislature have named John Gordon, currently\nof Groton, VT as the \u201cVermont State Calliopist <em>In Perpetuum<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bolstered\nby a recent piece in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sevendaysvt.com\/vermont\/stuck-in-vermont-john-gordons-granite-calliope\/Content?oid=27670438\"><em>Seven Days<\/em><\/a> focusing on Gordon\u2019s homemade \u201cGranite Calliope,\u201d\nAshe and Johnson felt they had no choice. \u201cMr. Gordon is the personification of\neverything people love about Vermont \u2013 creative, inventive, industrious, with\njust the right amount of \u2018whacky\u2019,\u201d Ashe told <em>The Winooski<\/em>. \u201cHe is a tribute to Vermont\u2019s long-standing granite\nindustry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vermont\u2019s\nmost recent poet laureate, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.charddeniord.com\/\">Chard diNiord<\/a>,\ncould not be reached for comment, but his office did reply by email: \u201cWe would\nlie to you if we could, but we can\u2019t \u2013 we are heartbroken over this decision.\nWith all due respect to Mr. Gordon, he isn\u2019t even a real Vermonter!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gordon\nalso did not reply to attempts to reach him. He doesn\u2019t have an office. He\ndoesn\u2019t have a cell phone. He doesn\u2019t use email. Rumor has it that he is on Facebook,\nbut we could find no trace of him there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\nconfronted about Gordon\u2019s lack of a Vermont pedigree, Ms. Johnson replied: \u201cOur\nmost recent state poet laureate was not a Vermonter either. In fact, he was\nborn in Connecticut, which is almost as bad as being from New Jersey! We\nbelieve Mr. Gordon should have been born in Vermont, and probably was. Vicious\nrumors suggesting he was born in Massachusetts are just that \u2013 vicious, even if\nthey are true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According\nto <em>Seven Days<\/em>, the next public\nopportunity to hear Gordon\u2019s Granite Calliope will be at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craftsburyfarmersmarket.com\/vermont-blueberry-festival\/\">Vermont Blueberry Festival<\/a> in Craftsbury on July 27. Gordon introduces all his\nperformances with original poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>GROTON &#8211; In a stunning move shocking the literary world, Vt. Senate President pro-tem Tim Ashe and House Leader Mitzi Johnson called an emergency session <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/10\/vt-to-drop-poet-laureate-in-favor-of-state-calliopist\/\" title=\"VT to Drop Poet Laureate in Favor of State Calliopist\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[52],"coauthors":[91],"class_list":["post-3521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vermont-life","tag-groton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/TWFI-2019_06_10.png","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8JVRF-UN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3523,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521\/revisions\/3523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3521"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewinooski.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}