In the midst of the banking crisis this week, in America, Britain, and beyond, a small, yet hugely moving personal story has emerged. A young, very succesful banker gave his life, trying to save a homeless man and his girlfriend from being terribly beaten, perhaps killed. This has biblical echoes, of the rich man and the eye of the needle, and the Good Samaritan. It is a reminder not to judge, ever, who a person is, just because of his job, or lack of one. This man risked - and lost - everything - when he didn't have to - because of human kindness that knew no boundaries. The world is poorer for his loss. If there is a heaven, that place is now richer with him in it.
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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