SOURCE: "New Laureate Wields Bully Pen for Poetry," in The Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 87, No. 222, October 12, 1995, pp. 1, 16.

[In the following essay, Shillinger presents a profile of Hass on the occasion of his appointment as Poet Laureate.]

Perhaps everyone is at the football game nearby. At any rate, the cafe is unhurried. Robert Hass bites a sandwich, crunching its wedges of green-skinned apple. He pauses, then recalls the heroes of his youth, none of whom wore cleats.

"One thing about growing up in the Bay Area in the 1950s was the Beat thing in San Francisco," he says. "There were poets around. It seemed like something you could be."

Today's youths may feel differently. In a culture where heroes are increasingly defined by their shoe contracts, poetry may seem out of place, a quaint art from the days before MTV.

Mr. Hass, who today becomes the nation's eighth poet...