No poet?! We didn't know it!

Lakewood , Ohio, has one -- the retired district manager of a combustion-control company, an octogenarian devoted to his bucket hat.

Soon, too, will Hillsborough , N.C., famous for its annual celebration of Hog Day , when dozens of pig-cooking teams and hog-hollerers roll into town.

In Tampa and Queens, N.Y. and Alexandria, Va., and dozens of other communities nationwide , poet laureates have spent years spinning words into official verse.

Even the city of Cambridge recently decided to embrace the concept. There, officials hope to announce its "poet populist" at the Cambridge River Festival on June 16. In typical Left Bank fashion, the winner will be chosen by the people.

So why is Boston just considering the idea, and why is it causing such a fuss?

It was here , after all, that writers whose words are now memorized by legions of school children idled away the hours at the Old Corner Bookstore and tried to out-read each other at the Athenaeum . The Saturday Club of Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Holmes, among others, met in the middle of the 19th century at the Parker House long before it acquired the Omni.

"That is kind of surprising that we don't have one," said Daniel Tobin (no relation to the city councilor ), a poet and chair of the writing, literature, and publishing faculty at Emerson College . "You would think Boston would, given the tradition of Boston in the literary world."

It was just January when City Councilor John Tobin first suggested that Boston should have its own poet laureate. He says a local poet approached him with the idea. On March 27, he and his fellow councilors will hold a public hearing to gather ideas on how the position might work.

But feedback, and ridicule, is already pouring in. Local blogs and radio talk shows have been full of snarky comments ever since the poet laureate proposal was floated. Even some poets have been less than enthusiastic. Many argue that the public's money -- local poets laureate generally receive a stipend no higher than the low four-figures; some work for free -- and public officials' time are best focused elsewhere. Others suggest the idea of an official poet is an oxymoron, an affiliation robbing artists of their independence.

One poet not enamored of the idea for an official Boston poet is Robert Pinsky , the US poet laureate from 1997 to 2000. Pinsky was one of the country's most visible poets laureate , creating the Favorite Poem Project , which documented the most beloved poems of thousands of Americans. He now teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge.

"I would rather see them give even a little more money to even one teacher or librarian who is doing a good job with poetry," he said.

Skepticism of a slightly different stripe was voiced by Henri Cole , whose book of poems, "Middle Earth , " was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Cole has been mentioned among writers themselves as a potential poet laureate. But he was dubious about the job.

"I think of poets as challengers of convention," he said, so the official role "seems a little bit contrary to my idea of what poetry is. I think government is a representation of convention. So I think there's a slight conflict there."

The South End writer, who has taught at Harvard and worked as a poet-in-residence at Smith and Brandeis, laughed at the suggestion of his own appointment. "I'm a curmudgeon," he said. "I'd be a terrible poet laureate."

But others argued that the job could be a chance, in the words of Daniel Tobin, to "bear witness to the life of a city."

"I think it's important for the poet laureate to not necessarily be only an occasional poet," he said. "That sort of limits the significance of the post.

"The poet should be in and of the city, writing poems that reveal its life in all its complexities, and not simply a matter of pomp and circumstance."

As city councilors consider creating the job, the University of Massachusetts at Boston is planning to p l ay home to Boston poets. The school is creating a poetry archive and poetry room to preserve the work of poets who wrote here.

Kevin Bowen , director of the university's William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences , argues that local poets are little known even in their neighborhoods.

"We need maybe more police on the streets," Bowen said. "But we also need more cultural richness in people's lives. It may be that they're cut off, that that's creating some of the dissatisfaction that people feel.

"Poetry, like music, connects people. It's not an ornament."

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com