This is, perhaps ominously, the 1,221st post at Eyewear - perhaps apt for a 21st century blog reporting on the worst economic crisis of the postmodern period. Indeed, there's an argument to be made that, since Britain is now about to enter a period of economic slump not seen since the austerity years of 1945 (according to the IMF), this first decade of the new century ends, ushering in a new era - one curiously mixed in outlook: exciting because Americans seem about to renew themselves, but dire as the world grinds to a halt. Will 2010-2019 be the decade of Green fightback, as we address the climate and remake the market economy in the new image of Obama? Or is this a new Great Depression, Mark II?
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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