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?
Eyewear wishes the young Oxford student and party leader all the best at this crucial time for Pakistan. There is something Shakespearean about this sudden rise from anonymity to youthful greatness - with the ringing claim that the best revenge is democracy - surely one of the great quotes of this decade, so far (and most debatable). Let's parse this one: "With his political inexperience, shy demeanour and Armani glasses, Bilawal was not the obvious candidate to lead his mother's party." What does The Guardian have against Armani glasses? One can be a great leader, and also stylishly bespectacled.
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And another big question we should ask ourselves, most of all thinking of countries outside Europe: "is there anything guaranteeing human and political rights outside democracy?"
Forgive me for asking questions I don't know the answer.
Happy New Year.
Davide Trame