MAYBE it’s all Christie Whitman’s fault. After all, it was under her stewardship as governor of New Jersey that the idea of a state poet laureate was first hatched. But how could she have known in April 2000 that the innocuous role of poet laureate would fall under intense scrutiny? Back then, the distinction of New Jersey’s first poet laureate was bestowed upon Gerald Stern, whose works include “This Time: New and Selected Poems,” winner of the National Book Award. And the poet laureate gig is a pretty good deal: It involves a two-year term and a $10,000 stipend–Stern used the money to travel around the state, reading poems.

New Jersey is no stranger to poetry–native sons include Walt Whitman (Camden), William Carlos Williams (Rutherford), Robert Pinsky (Long Branch), and Allen Ginsberg (Newark). Also born in Newark was Everett LeRoi Jones, a 1960s black radical who changed his name to Amiri Baraka, who last July became New Jersey’s second poet laureate, and is now at the center of a political firestorm.