I’ve nver considered poetry to be a fun-filled event.. hey. maybe it’s just me.
I love poetry, but these people were invited for political reasons and not for their work.
Billy Collins is actually a good poet; however, he is a raving leftist who also spent some time writing screeds against George Bush (even though he was named Poet Laureate by Bush, IIRC), and is utterly devoted to Bambi. Rita Dove is, frankly, lousy and if she weren’t a politically correct black academic who writes poems about her private parts would never have been noticed in the world (or been named Poet Laureate by Clinton). Most of the other “poets” seem to have been people who are professionally black; that is, they have made a profession out of the color of their skin.