Word: matsunaga
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...almost 210 years, the U.S. has muddled along without an official poet laureate. This lack did not noticeably hinder the work of such natives as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Frost and Robert Lowell. But it bothered Hawaiian Senator Spark Matsunaga, an avid reader and sometimes writer of poems, including one called Ode to a Traffic Light ("Impartial traffic cop/ That blushingly speeding cars do stop...
From the moment Matsunaga entered Congress, as a member of the House in 1963, he began a lonely but determined campaign to create a national poetic license. Last year he finally succeeded. Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin agreed that each new consultant in poetry to the Library, a post that has existed for 50 years and carries a one- or two-year term, would also bear the title of poet laureate. Matsunaga was understandably elated: "The poet laureate of the U.S. will raise the prestige and respect of the poet to the point where youngsters will aspire to become...
...aides trundled him onto the Senate floor in a wheelchair, a needle and intravenous tube still inserted in his arm. Senators gave Wilson a standing ovation, which he turned to laughter by asking deadpan, "What is the question?" He voted yes on the budget resolution, but Hawaii Democrat Spark Matsunaga rushed in from his Senate office to vote no, and the tally was deadlocked at 49-49. Vice President George Bush was in the chair, however; he had cut short a Western speechmaking tour and rushed back from Phoenix Thursday morning. Bush cast the tie-breaking vote...