WEALTH OF IDEAS

Today we feature Bob Stanley, Sacramento's Poet Laureate. Often described as "a passionate member of the poetry community", Bob Stanley is also the president of the Sacramento Poetry Center Board. He teaches Creative Writing and English at CSU Sacramento and at Sacramento City College. His poems have won a number of awards, including the California Focus on Writers prize in 2006 and have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He recently published his first chapbook, Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger , and he has edited several books, including a collection of poems by poet laureates from different cities in California. I know Bob Stanley as a very busy person, always involved with one event or another, but he set aside a little bit of time to share his reading list and to answer a few of my interview questions. Bobby's Reading List Summerland , by Michael Chabon – A fantasy with a baseball theme. Two Jane Austen novels for the wonderful Sacramento Libr...

Bob Stanley © SMAC Sacramento poet laureate, Bob Stanley, runs the website County Lines, which is part of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. When I talked with Bob earlier today, he said he hopes the website will inform readers about the poetic richness of Sacramento. The website features a different poet every week, and has so far displayed information about eighteen poets. The first post on July 20, 2009 featured Bob Stanely, who describes the function of the website as follows: You may not know this, but Sacramento is full of poets. From Elk Grove to South Natomas, from Folsom to downtown, there are hundreds of people who write, read, and share their poems. Teenagers in Oak Park, retirees in Citrus Heights, college students, state workers, people young and old share this ancient art form. If you know where to look, you can find them, working on their craft, because Sacramento is full of poets. As the new Poet Laureate of the city and county of Sacramento, my goal is to h...