Thin films of amorphous pDR1M azobenzene homopolymer have been wire poled under high-field conditions. All poled films show a very efficient axial and also a strong polar ordering, as shown by polarized UV-visible measurements and SHG experiments. One of the most striking experimental evidences is an increasing new narrow absorption band around 400 nm, which is detected by using p-polarized light under various incidence angles. Such a spectral feature has already been observed in a few azobenzene-containing liquid-crystal polymers. The poled structures are very stable at room temperature: more than one year after poling, 70% of the initial SHG signal is still preserved in films with a thickness larger than 150 nm. The macroscopic polar ordering is nearly destroyed upon heating the poled film at near 80 degreesC, i.e., -45 degreesC below the T-g of the starting polymer. A proposed general approach allows the determination of the anisotropic optical constants that simulates nicely all the polarized absorption spectra at several angles of incidence. In particular, the induced birefringence after poling is evaluated as high as similar to0.21 at 1.064 mum, far from any charge-transfer resonance. Finally, from a detailed comparative study of the electronic spectra of a DR1 solution in chloroform and of an unpoled, a poled, and a thermally depoled film, we have shown that the absorption spectra can be nicely deconvoluted into three main bands. Most of the spectroscopic changes upon dc field poling are then qualitatively and quantitatively explained; they come from a significant intensity decrease of the high-energy pi-pi* transition (-12%) in favor of the low-energy DT band (+12%) and the estimated (P-2) order parameters for these transitions are quite large (similar to+0.50), confirming a high degree of ordering.