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Letter from the Director

It was an honor on June 19 for the Maine Arts Commission to co-host - with the Beloit Poetry Journal - a surprise celebration for former Maine Arts Commission member Marion Kingston Stocking. Therefore, this month I am sharing this column with Maine Arts Commission member Lee Sharkey whose comments about Marion's contributions to literature are below.

From my perspective, I would like to focus on Marion's contributions to what the Maine Arts Commission has become due to her efforts. Marion, who served on the Maine Arts Commission from 1993-99 and on its literature panel prior to that time, was the commission member who provided the rare combination of wisdom and advocacy to convince her colleagues to redesign the agency by making a commitment to developing the arts at the community level. Marion's work with local cultural assessment and planning in Hancock County grew into the statewide program now known as Discovery Research. Discovery Research is a national model of local cultural inventory work combined with pragmatic plans for arts programs. (For a detailed description of Discovery Research, review the link on MaineArts.com.)

Due to the attention Discovery Research has attracted, Maine has benefited financially from national public and foundation resources. Moreover, with now 32 Discovery Research projects completed or in process in all parts of Maine, an extensive grassroots "arts force" has been created. That "force" has been instrumental in the development of the New Century Program that has generated more than $4 million in new dollars for arts and culture and in the more recent work with the Creative Economy. Without the solid community based foundation created through Discovery Research, I am convinced that the Maine Arts Commission would not have had the public support and confidence to develop larger funding models and a legitimate relationship with economic development.

We owe Marion a great deal of thanks for her leadership, insight, grace and good humor in giving us a people-based vision that has enriched Maine many fold. I invite you to read Lee Sharkey's comments below (for one writer's comments on another) that were prepared for the recent celebration honoring Marion for her 50 years of service to the journal and her contributions to the arts in Maine and beyond.

Alden C. Wilson
Director

"Few people, if any, can match Marion Stocking's record of service to the arts. As a young poet turned academic, Marion Kingston came to Beloit College in 1954 and soon thereafter joined the staff of the then-fledgling Beloit Poetry Journal. The crew of editors she became a part of included the poet David Ignatow and her soon-to-be husband David Stocking. This small group of poets, scholars, and friends shaped the magazine's collaborative editorial process, a tradition fortified by - in Marion's words - "bread and soup and a love of the craft," which sustained it through changes of staff and political weather and sustains it to this day. In 1984, on their retirement, Marion and David Stocking brought the journal with them to Maine. Upon David's death in 1985 Marion took on the full responsibility of editing the journal, screening the dozens of poems that arrived each day at her mailbox, corresponding with contributors, writing book reviews, and overseeing every aspect of production and distribution - all with intelligence and generosity. She continued this devotion until two years ago, when she stepped down from the editorship to devote more time to book reviewing and other writing she had deferred these many years.

The Beloit Poetry Journal, one of the oldest in continuous publication in the English-speaking world, has a well-deserved reputation for spotting and publishing poets early in their careers. Among the poets whose first or early publication was in the BPJ are Galway Kinnell, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, W. S. Merwin, and more recently Mary Leader and Sherman Alexie. The journal's loyal readers look to it for the excellence and aesthetic range of its poetry, but also for Marion's reviews, which in the belles lettres tradition address concerns of craft or aesthetics while introducing readers to books they may well want to read. As good as the poems are, many readers when they pick up a new issue turn to the review before looking at them. For them and for her colleagues on the journal, Marion Kingston Stocking and the Beloit Poetry Journal will always be inextricable."

- Lee Sharkey