Newly Rich Poetry Group Faces Big Challenges

Until June the Poetry Foundation’s four employees worked out of such close quarters that they could

overhear everything. And until August, each staff member was juggling such a big workload that poets who submitted work to the organization’s highly respected and influential magazine, Poetry, often had to wait up to four months to hear whether their work would reach the magazine’s 11,000 paying readers. And until the past year, one of the key challenges for the organization’s board was figuring out how to manage to pay its bills on a $669,000 operating budget.

Now much of that has begun to change as the Poetry Foundation, formerly known as the Modern Poetry Association, has gotten $14-million of a pledge expected to be worth at least $100-million when it is paid out over the next 30 years. The commitment from Ruth Lilly, 88, was part of a pledge to several philanthropic organizations expected to total at least $320-million.

Miss Lilly, a lover of poetry and a poet herself since grade school, made the pledge after becoming convinced over the past 30 years that the charity was the most outstanding modern-poetry organization she had known, says her lawyer, Thomas P. Ewbank, of Indianapolis. She previously had given money, though in less substantial amounts, to the group to cover operating costs as well as fellowships and remained impressed by the magazine — even though it rejected at least one poem she submitted to it.

“They must have been very diplomatic and kind about it,” Mr. Ewbank says. “But she’s also a person who is not going to be retaliatory.”

Seeking a Leader

As the organization gets used to the idea that it is one of the wealthiest arts groups in the United States — it ranks No. 92 on the Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s list of the charities that raise the most from private sources — it is slowly transforming itself. It has moved out of the cramped space a donor had provided into more spacious rented offices, and by the end of the year it expects to have doubled the size of its staff. Already it has hired a Northwestern University English professor to work part time to sort through the 90,000 poetry submissions it receives annually so it can respond quickly to writers.

It is also going through a leadership change: The longtime editor of Poetry, who was expected to lead the organization’s publications and programs as it expanded, left in August, and the charity’s board is also seeking a president who has strong management skills and experience helping organizations grow.

Already, the organization has significantly more reach. News reports about Miss Lilly’s gift did much to increase attention to Poetry, the 90-year-old journal that published early works of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. More than 1,400 people took out subscriptions in the three months after the Lilly gift was announced. Now that Poetry’s parent organization is gearing up for the time when it will be able to spend about $4-million annually on cultural programs, it has received advice from hundreds of sources.

A handful of the recommendations the charity has received have been larks, such as the e-mail from a New York lawyer who wrote that a colleague “had just bought a bunch of very poetic shoes and said she could use help paying for them.” But many are from groups seeking assistance with a range of programs, such as efforts to teach poetry to children before they hit the fields in after-school soccer programs, as well as from organizations that sponsor workshops for aspiring poets and art exhibits that feature poetry.

Some of the groups appealing for aid are in urgent need of assistance and even face closure following cuts in state arts budgets and other financial problems caused by the bad economy.

“No one can appreciate their needs more than we can,” says Stephen Young, a longtime staff member of Poetry who was named program director of the foundation in June.

Cautious Approach

Even so, the organization is making a deliberate effort not to jump into programs before it has created the structure necessary to handle the awesome responsibility that came hand in hand with the gift, says Deborah Cummins, chair of the Poetry Foundation’s Board of Trustees, a published poet and part-time teacher who has been juggling a packed schedule as the demands of her volunteer post have grown. The full board now meets monthly, and trustees are responsible for additional work on smaller board committees that focus on specific tasks.

“We are getting so many inquiries about what kind of programming we’re doing and how we’re giving the money away, I’ve just had to say, ‘You’re asking for sizzle but we don’t even have the steak on the grill yet,’” says Ms. Cummins. “We’re really in the early stages of creating the foundation of a foundation.”

To date, no significant new expenditures of the money have been made aside from the new offices, new computers, and phones and higher pay for magazine contributors, who now receive $6 a line, triple the previous rate. Indeed the group still seems to remember its more budget-conscious days: One of its lawyers says the board is still so worried about spending money that its members sometimes limit their dealings with him and speak fast when they do talk so that they won’t incur big bills; and the new accommodations are spartan, filled with donated used furniture and reliant on a poster or two for art.

Some observers in the world of poetry are hopeful that the group’s early organizational efforts will pay off later. Edward Hirsch, a poet who became president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation last year, says he believes his own fund’s success stems from the clear mission its founders articulated. “It’s wise to be cautious about it and set it up as scrupulously as possible,” Mr. Hirsch says. “It’s clear that the key task is to determine how best to serve the world of poetry with that money. The pitfalls are that there are lots of ways to spend it that might not have very much effect.”

Structural Changes

While the organization is being cautious about making programming choices, its board has made some important decisions already. The trustees decided to restructure the charity into a private operating foundation in the next year or so. As a foundation, the organization will have to follow somewhat more complex federal rules governing its spending and investments than it did as a charity.

The board did consider setting up a “supporting organization” to hold the gift while maintaining itself as a public charity, says Rich Campbell, a Chicago lawyer who advises the foundation. While that would have allowed it to avoid the taxes and distribution requirements, the Poetry Foundation would have to have raised at least a third of its money from donors other than Miss Lilly, a feat that Mr. Campbell says would have been too difficult if donors were aware of the sizable wealth of the supporting organization.

The group has also gotten involved in a court battle over the Lilly gift that erupted after the plummeting stock market led to a sharp drop in value of trusts set up by Miss Lilly to benefit the Poetry Foundation, as well as Americans for the Arts, a Washington group (No. 66), and the Lilly Endowment, in Indianapolis.

Americans for the Arts went to court to recoup $25-million it said it lost because of the way the trust was managed by National City Bank of Indiana. In response, the bank said it had done nothing wrong, and asked another court to exonerate it of any wrongdoing with regard to its handling of the trusts.

The Poetry Foundation objected to the bank’s request, saying the value of the trusts fell sharply because the bank didn’t move quickly enough to diversify the composition of the trusts, which were created with stock in Eli Lilly & Company.

The Poetry Foundation board was at first reluctant to join the legal action, but ultimately it felt it had a fiduciary responsibility to seek payments to cover the loss of value in the trusts.

“It’s in Miss Lilly’s interest not to have $100-million go out the window,” says Robert F. Coleman, a Chicago lawyer who is representing the foundation in the action against the bank.

New Editor

Like the Poetry Foundation, Americans for the Arts has also been spending much of the past year deciding what it will do with the $120-million or more it is expected to receive from Miss Lilly. But Americans for the Arts was already a larger group, with a staff of 40 and a budget of $9-million, and was in a better position to deal with such a substantial commitment.

While the groups are wrangling in court over the exact amounts they will get from the pledge announced last year, Miss Lilly’s earlier beneficence is already playing a significant role at the Poetry Foundation.

In May, the magazine hired Christian Wiman, recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, to take the reins as the new editor of Poetry. The fellowships are awarded to students who pursue poetry studies. The 37-year-old Mr. Wiman, a poet and essayist, succeeded Joseph Parisi, who was editor in chief for 20 years. Mr. Parisi did not return phone calls seeking comment on why he left, but Ms. Cummins, the board chair, said his departure was amicable.

After giving a visitor a tour of the Poetry Foundation’s new offices, which contain numerous empty rooms still awaiting as yet unhired staff members, Mr. Wiman says he understands that challenges lie ahead.

It will be important, he says, for the magazine to maintain its commitment to cutting-edge poetry and to keep its autonomy in the suddenly larger organization. He says he is heartened that the board has already signaled its commitment by hiring someone younger than 40 to head the magazine.

Says Mr. Wiman. “We don’t want to be just publishing famous people who may not be writing the best poems.”