Britain likes to think it has a "special relationship" with America, that supersedes all other of the indispensable nation's alliances. It's therefore good to see a subtle realignment, as Obama's first foreign visit is to Ottawa. It may not be popular to say so over here in the UK, but Canada, far from being "boring" - is a dynamo, and a key nation in terms of environment, diplomacy, economy, and culture. I cringe every time I read another triumphalist account in the papers of some British actor or actress getting "the nod" from some award or academy. Half of Hollywood is Canadian, and yet, modestly, we Canucks rarely go berserk when one of ours does well there. Anyway, Obama is very welcome in Ottawa. I hope he has time to taste a beaver's tail, the local delicacy.
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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