Originally published in the Times Argus/Rutland Herald Weekend Magazine, April 23, 2022 for the “Remember When” column with the title, “When Frost almost got heaved.”

One hundred years ago, long before April would be designated as National Poetry Month or March as Women’s History Month, the following little known story offers an interesting intersection of the two. In addition, our still sometimes not-so subtle resistance to “outlanders” has been brought into sharp focus over the last few years and so it is always timely to look to history to see just how far—or not—we have come. 

On April 17, 1922, Miss Fanny B. Fletcher of Proctorsville gave a lecture and poetry reading at Ludlow’s Fletcher Memorial Library. Miss Fletcher, who “spoke with the authority of one who had studied our Green Mountain poets well,” had been appointed by the Vermont Federation of Women’s Clubs to compile a list of potential state poet laureates. The “impelling motive” was that of “creating interest in Vermont verse.” 

Miss Fletcher’s talk, titled “Poets of Vermont” and “interspersed with humorous anecdotes,” was a follow-up to the Free Public Library Commission’s publication of Miss Fletcher’s candidate roster. Newspaper articles about the upcoming election encouraged Women’s Clubs around the state to study the poets’ work and then vote for their favorite.

This action would start a debate neither Miss Fletcher nor Mrs. O. H. Coolidge, president of the Rutland Woman’s Club and originator of the idea, could have anticipated. 

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