Today is an 80-degree, sunny day here in Upstate New York; Memorial Day no less, and I’m tallying up the number of poets and literary organizations that exist in each state—inside my house. I’m sure you’ve caught one or two of the Yahoo or MSN lists of the best and worst places to live based on various criteria such as low crime, healthy lifestyle, weather, or education. I happen to be someone who is always looking for a reason to move, so I thought I’d see which states are the best and worst poet-friendly places to hang your hat.

I used the National Poetry Map from poets.org and looked at the number of poets and literary organizations in each state, figuring A. Birds of a feather, and B. How many poetry outlets exist for said birds? Here’s what I found:

States with the Most Poets

1.    New York: 40
2.    California: 39
3.    Ohio: 29
4.    New Jersey: 28
5.    Massachusetts: 22

States with the Most Literary Organizations & Centers

1.    California: 13
2.    Texas: 10
3.    South Carolina & Illinois: 9
4.    New York: 8
5.    Ohio, Kentucky, & Maryland: 7

Obviously population is a factor in any kind of ranking situation, but it’s still interesting to weigh the results. In most cases you will see that the number of supportive organizations must pay off when you look at the number of poets from that state. On the other hand, you might wonder why Texas, with a whopping 10 organizations, churns out only 13 poets. That’s almost a one poet-per-center percentage! This leads me to speculate that either: A. poets use Texas for training purposes only and abruptly tail off to their home state, or B. it has something to do with the weather, political arena, or water.

Worst Places to Live as a Poet (# of poets, # of organizations & centers)

1.    North Dakota (4, 0)
2.    Nevada (4, 0)
3.    Idaho (3, 4)
4.    Indiana (4, 2)
5.    Montana (7, 0)

Here’s a list tallied IMO (In my opinion):

Most Surprising States in Terms of Poetry (# of poets, # of organizations)

1.    Ohio (29, 7)
2.    North Carolina (20, 6)
3.    Virginia (19, 6)
4.    Missouri (16, 6)
5.    Rhode Island (19, 3)

The reason I find these states to be surprising in terms of poetry is because, in my mind, they don’t scream poetry to me for one snobbish, New Yorker biased reason or another. Rhode Island, for example, is a small state yet home to 19 poets! And I never would have guessed that Ohio would pump out the third highest number of poets in the nation. Must be the excitement of tornadoes, or these are the 29 people who opted out of farming.