Call her a magical poetry godmother. Ruth Lilly, who gave away about $800 million to of her inheritance, has died. She was 94, and she passed away at her home in Indianapolis.
From the Indianapolis Star on Lilly's legacy in the arts:
She gave to a wide variety of causes -- colleges, hospitals, the National Easter Seals Society. But it was her unexpected donation of $100-million in 2002 to an obscure, Chicago-based poetry association that revealed something deeply personal: Ms. Lilly was a poet at heart. Not only did she read it, she wrote it, though to little acclaim.
The unusual gift sustains Garrison Keillor's daily radio poetry readings on The Writer's Almanac, sponsors a poetry professorship at Indiana University and honors top poets with prestigious annual awards.
“Poetry has no greater friend than Ruth Lilly,” said John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, which received the whopping grant. (The gift was seen ironic because the foundation had more than once declined to publish Ms. Lilly’s poetry submissions in its magazine.)
The Poetry Foundation also offers the annual $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize to the writer whose lifetime accomplishments are extraordinary, and five Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships of $15,000 to younger poets. Fanny Howe was the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner. The most recent fellowships went to Malachi Black, Eric Ekstrand, Chloë Honum, Jeffrey Schultz, and Joseph Spece.
All is not well with Lilly's gift to poetry, however. The Chicago Tribune reports that the Poetry Foundation is all asunder about how to spend much of it. (Since the original donation, the value of Lilly's gift has grown to $200 million.)
More than half the 12 trustees of a foundation set up to administer the gift either resigned or say they were forced out after criticizing the new leadership.
Among their concerns are plans for a $25 million mansion-like "Home for Poetry," which one trustee characterized as the foundation's "monument" to itself; the granting of a job to foundation president John Barr's wife; and the spending of more than $1 million on a Web site and a brow-raising $706,000 on a survey to determine poetry's place in American life today.
"We are not a private club, and the Foundation's resources are not for our personal gratification," Peter Minarik, one ex-trustee, scolded the foundation's leadership in one of a flurry of letters documenting the disagreements.
Ultimately, the conflict landed on the desk of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose office has oversight of nonprofits. Her staff is now looking into the ex-trustees' concerns, which include questions about fiscal practices, conflict of interest, nepotism and playing fast and loose with the rules charitable organizations are supposed to follow.In an interview, Donald Marshall, chairman of The Poetry Foundation, said he "categorically denied" the dissident trustees' allegations of mismanagement. While expressing admiration for the trustees' skills and experience, he said he was "mystified" by their complaints to Madigan, which he sees as based upon "rather stale claims."
Robyn Ziegler, a spokeswoman for Madigan, said the investigation is ongoing and that officials received a new batch of information this month from Poetry.
"We have not found any violations at this juncture," Ziegler said, while noting that Lilly delivered the millions to Poetry with a very broad mandate for how it was to be spent.
You know that old saying about how nobody can beat the Democrats like the Democrats? Or as Jon Stewart put it regarding the 2000 presidential election, Democrats can't even win when they win. I feel like there is an analogy to be made here about poets ...
Image Credit: The Indianapolis Star
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