Kevin Stein, poet laureate of Illinois and author of the new book of poems Sufficiency of the Actual, was featured in the January 24, 2009, edition of the Chicago Tribune.

Kevin Stein is used to it by now. When people first discover that he’s poet laureate of Illinois, and then when they find out that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is the guy responsible for picking the state’s first poet, everybody makes the same joke.

“They want to know how much I had to pay him,” Stein says with a laugh.