Eyewear, last Sunday, predicted this week might look like the 30s. Well, at week's end, in some ways, it does: the current projected US Government intervention in the economy is historic, and reminiscent of the sort of measures that FDR had to undertake, during The Great Depression. This time, the aim is to head things off at the pass; currently, there is a market rally. We must see. How will this play out with Obama vs. McCain? These are thrilling, frightening, new times for capitalism, which is evolving into a new form, one highly-regulated, and underwritten by government. So - is America, (again) to be a mixed economy? Is this the end of old-school capitalism?
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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will only make it more difficult than it already is for the majority of Americans to get by.
The United States could well be on its way to third world status.