Yesterday, one of my closest and most beloved family members died. I will write more, in the fullness of time, here, and elsewhere, but not 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....
Comments
Still, my sympathies, and more importantly, my prayers. Losing someone close is always hard, and, at Christmas, so much more.
I see from your post http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2008/11/poetry-and-religion.html that you are a man who wonders about the mystery of what may be out beyond. And you note well poetry is the standard of faith.
"One day, the poet who seeks a new religion may find an old faith waiting for him, where his journey began."
I am not among the atheist poets. If you also are not, remember the god who saves you. And, try CS Lewis' processing of his wife's death with his own faith in "A Grief Observed."
To quote poet John Donne, "As he that fears God fears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees everything else."
Please accept my heartfelt condolences.
Happy New Year!