New Hampshire has a new poet Laureate, Alice B. Fogel, and that’s wonderful news for all of us who cherish poetry and the written word. I must confess up front that I am not personally acquainted with the poet, nor am I familiar with her work, which includes four books published and a new one forthcoming. As a newcomer to this state, I will have the pleasant task of becoming familiar with her writings very soon.

From the press release announcing her appointment to the position beginning in January and continuing for the next five years, we learn that she lives in Acworth (another confession: I had to check the map to see exactly where that is; my NH geography lessons are an on-going enterprise). She teaches at Keene State College not too far from me and Landmark College in Vermont, has those four books to her credit and has had poems appear in numerous anthologies, magazines and journals. Along the way she has collected some splendid critical reviews and shared her poetry at workshops and in a variety of teaching sessions.

The press release states that she was chosen from a field of 17 candidates. That’s a lot for a small state. In Georgia, where I most recently lived, there was no formal list of candidates, but I know because I was peripherally involved in the process that the “possibles” for the position of Georgia Poet Laureate did not come close to 17. My new home state must be quite well endowed, poetically speaking.

The new Poet Laureate’s duties apparently are to serve as an “ambassador” for poets in New Hampshire, raising the visibility of poets in the state and bringing poetry closer to all the citizens of the state. Admirable goals indeed. I’m all for any process that helps bring writers and readers closer together. I wish Alice Fogel well and look forward to discovering her poems. In the meantime, from her web site (alicebfogel.com) I found the poem below, which I am re-printing here without her direct permission but with the hope that she will accept my appreciation for its striking, perceptive imagery and graceful expression.

SWEET VEIN
(watching the comet in March, maple sugaring season)
(from Be That Empty; first published in Chelsea Magazine)

Breathe in the trail of its light, ice river vaporizing
from light years afar and melted from the spilling dipper . . .
Now taste this: a water bathed with the sweetness
rising, released, the sweet abundance of stars instilling dark
with its white sugar grains . . . Boiling, boiling,
all night the smoke billowing milkily, clouding the cold
bellows of snow, the breathing below freezing after a day’s
bright thaw . . . Dark, darker, the syrup
darkening under midnight’s departing moon: the comet
moonlighting, the sap—moonshine . . . Come dip
your long-handled cup across the eastern branch of sky
into this steam, into this stream of liquid dust sailing
through the open vein: a splendid suspension to sip
at lips dark and wet, to raise up, drink in, swallow: