There's something immensely moving about the way the world is being lifted by the Irish Spring that is Obama's election victory. And now, a hit song about Obama being Irish.
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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At that time in my learning, after seven years studying Gaelic texts in translation that constituted the course work of real life bards, i had just grasped the significance of the three methods of extemporised composition which were took on by the trainee filidh poets, in the eighth year of study. Imbas foronsai - manifestation of good knowledge which illuminates - which is like the Frost notion of turning up on the page not knowing what will be created, and at the end of the extemprised session, some knowledge we have not articulated and firm in the consciousness, articulates itself via the medium of ourselves, into print. Like Columbo at the end of the show drawing all the strands of his plodding into a coherent accurate narrative of events, getting at the truth of things. The prophetic side of a poets practice, in efect. And this live version, infused Hope into me, as the wording is flawless, the metrical structure of the names, O'Leary, O'Reily, O'Hare and O'Hara, there's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama -- there is some deeply poetic yet invisible proof that, yes, yes, this is right, and now i can come out of the woods and show my hand, cheerlead for this man. For myself first i might add, as riding this wave of Hope, prior to him winning, could only be just a decision to err on the side of Hope.
I reasoned that the guy being far more eloquent and cleverer than his opponents, once in the hot seat, what has happened, would happen. Whilst not explicitly prophecying he would get in, i did all i could as a cheerleader to effect this outcome, Live Version
love and peace