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?
Charles Bernstein's recent intervention in the poetry markets makes sound poetic sense for uncertain poetic times.
Comments
when he came to Parnell square
was bernie in the head, all there
a prophetical language centric
mad-head who read reet well
well, well of Segias and Connla
took a book from Colum, house
red in the fort of shadows, ber-
nie ein nie chuck, searles
Charles for king and Hal slotting
Terry and june, moon, do away
herr jammers in the eff off house
SW gated, connected to herr poo a blic not fik is bernie of the NY
school, ronnie's mate, Mr Silly
man, we blew that night in the writers centre..
invited bernie out to Burdocks
for fish and chips, wiv his missus
first time in the pool of light
the black mountain guard, custodian
of the holy word from Zukofferz
intellectual be gob wuz blowing
me and bernie, at the altar of
a last minute job, five communicants, an audience of fawns
first time bernie - come chucker
come and meet yr biggest one
Desmond Swords - spun you one
made sure to mention Robert, Bob
the shepard, mister Sheppard
Todd -- UToo in the mob, fintan
bradán feasa in the boyhood deeds
of Fionn, knowledge, crane bags
ancient hags and the hawk of Achill
swirls above the sod -- Bernie
a market townland
is where the intellect was sharpened
a flat body of farmland
fringing Liverpool’s urban cloak
tinging the Lancashire twang
which can thicken immediately
the voice tweeked to make the speaker
sound like a like a spud-tame
lame brained div
trained from birth to be a fully labotamised
half cocked bog trotting dick head
or knob who sounds like a tit
gifted at carrot plucking and
swede, leek and beetroot munching
in mud covered rust bucket caravans
where dreams of getting bladdered
in the plough, the Shoe, the Lion,
the Queens or the Cricks
play on a loop until pay day
when the wages are blown
on ale and Ethel Austin wellies
worn in the rakish manner
of a hip Wigan pig shit shovellor
out on the piss.
But living in this linguistaically
liminal hinterland isn't all spuds
and dunderheads.
The liquid nature of the lingo
means scouse tones can also be
freely spouted
and the slow baked brain vacant
bleat of a sheep fiddling field lover
instantly switch to the city witted
jive talk of a street slick
trackie clad bling king giving it
the big one about buying a knock
of helicopter to go clubbing in
London with..
that was what Bernie heard Todd..
gra agus siochain, come to Limerick, 12 Nov, four provinces
eight contendors, an honorary
can ad i and add on, as they are talking of, over at the chaps..