It may not be, exactly, the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it has echoes of that moment. It may more closely resemble the Berlin Airlift, of 60 years ago. America's late, but chillingly decisive, entry into the Russian-Georgia war (simmering now, but not entirely over, according to new reports of intransigence, as of time of this post) raises the stakes. If the US navy, air force, and military is actually going to enter Georgia, bringing supplies, the Russians will have to open blocked routes. With US armed forces on the ground in the country, the tripwire for wider war is in place. Obviously, diplomacy should win out, and this matter be temporarily calmed. However, make no mistake, Bush's statement, today, is more determined, and directly confrontational, than many in the EU, and beyond, might have hoped. It shores up Georgia's ruins, reinstates some Western credentials, and offers horse-out-of-the-barn support. Hope it doesn't lead to blowback.
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....
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And our National Disgrace, our Italian Prime Minister is his friend...or so he says when he invites him to Sardinia after despising for ages the "Communists" here in Italy.
Putin, like Mugabe, like Karazich should be simply in La Hague but the world is slow when real action requires...first the Dead, busloads of them, then words, the so called diplomacy which often means "hiding the crimes to prevent other crimes"....