The BBC's cack-handed decision to scuttle the Oxford winning team on University Challenge (which included the best-ever contestant, Ms. Trimble) on a technicality, is both sad and mean-spirited; when considered in the light of the far worse offences perpetrated by the likes of Mr. Brand, it borders on the hypocritical. When even Ur-presenter Bamber Gascoigne weighs in, you know something is amiss. Basically, Mr. Kay entered the contest in good faith - as a student. The BBC, by failing to record all the shows during the school term, and failing to keep Mr. Kay informed of how this might effect contestants who had just recently graduated or left university, is partly responsible for his failure to entirely pass muster. However, whoever snitched was nasty, and whoever jumped at the Beeb and kicked the champions down is dim. They've snatched a defeat from a victory, and spoiled a feel-good story forever. In the process, they may just have ruined a once-timeless and quaint show, a remnant from a better, or at least more Larkinesque, Britain.
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. What do I mean by smart?
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In other words, all publicity is good publicity. ;)
Jx