The note firing Pennyslvania state poet Sam Hazo was short and sweet: his “services were no longer needed,” wrote Penny Lee, an aide to Governor Ed Rendell. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette book editor Bob Hoover reports in an October 3 column that Hazo, who’d had the job since 1993 and refused to take a salary for it, got no further explanation from the governor’s office, and a hue and cry quickly rose from poets and the many fans of the popular Hazo. Shippensburg State University student Melanie Simms announced a rally to be held at the school and a petition drive, and said she was getting help from another fired state poet laureate, Amiri Baraka.

• FOLLOW-UP: In yesterday’s column, Hoover reports that he’s finally gotten an explanation out of the governor’s office: “since the poet’s job fell under the now-defunct office of cultural adviser to the governor, it vanished with the cultural adviser,” an aide tells him. However, the aide “had no idea when the cultural adviser was dumped.” Rendell’s spokesperson Nina Tinari tells him, “Gov. Rendell believes that all Pennsylvania poets should share the title of state poet.”