Prime Minister Brown's rescue plan for the banks, and wider economy, was hailed, as recently as a few days ago, by media pundits and Nobel prize winners alike; at the start of this week, shares seemed to rise, and hope gave way to genuine optimism. Unfortunately, three days later, all is not so well. Not only does it seem that Brown's expensive plan was a finger holding back a sea of trouble, but that financial institutions no longer have the confidence to even be bailed out. If last night's dramatic stock plummets continue today, we'll be back to roughly where we were last week, end of this one - down 20%, or more. Meanwhile, as the world economy grinds to a halt, the world faces a severe downturn. This is worrisome news. No one is out of the woods, Bretton or otherwise, yet.
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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