Skip to main content

Obama and Walcott

Barack Obama has recently hosted a "Poetry Jam" at the White House, inviting performance poets and Jazz musicians, among others. I didn't recognise any of the guests, and do hope the great Patricia Smith and Bob Holman get invited soon. It appears that the "coolest man on the planet" - and easily the most cultured US President since Kennedy - likes poetry (we knew he wrote it); indeed, he was seen lately with a collection of Derek Walcott's "in his back pocket". The meteoric rise of Walcott's reputation in American political circles has been matched by an equally catastrophic fall in Britain.

Sadly, he had to withdraw from the running for the position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford, after a dodgy dossier was sent around to academics (and voters) alleging harassment claims. It's an awfully shabby way to treat a poetic genius, and Nobel prize winner. I think it might be wise to postpone the elections for a year, to let the dust settle. However, Ruth Padel would be a superb choice; her new Darwin collection is a masterwork.

Still, one wonders at the way in which such bland moralising has been used to humiliate a major poet of our time - after all, none of the claims made against the man were proven, were they? I am utterly disgusted by the idea of harassment, and oppose it, but believe in fair play, too, and would have liked to see Walcott selected, or not, based on his poetic, not priapic, adventures. I wonder if Obama will removed his copy of Walcott from his trousers, once he gets wind of this downfall? Maybe not, he's able to stand up to Netanyahu, he could probably handle Oxford, too.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".