Michael Palin is funny. Sarah Palin isn't. Yes, she puts another crack in the glass ceiling - but also would set back the cause of reform in America by decades (to paraphrase Kane) if elected Veep (and potentially President - McCain is not a healthy man). Eyewear had predicted, last week, that McCain might select her (or another female running mate). Now that it has happened, it is worse than I thought. Palin is pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-abortion, and pro-drilling in the untouched Alaskan wilderness. She's a Thatcheresque-Lite figure, a villain in drag. To compare her nomination to the profound history that Obama is making is to travesty the Civil Rights Movement, and his subtle, strong eloquence and integrity.
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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