Eyewear has over 70 "followers" currently - but I feel the term is misleading. That's because they're leaders themselves. Most of them have their own dynamic literary blogs. The blogosphere, for all its faults, does run on sympathetic energy, in many ways. Eyewear also is regularly read by hundreds, often thousands, of other readers each month. Increasingly, it's one of many places for writers, especially poets, to meet. I just wanted to step away from the droll persona I sometimes adopt and express my appreciation for all your support over the last few years. Keep leaving comments. And, as always, I welcome reviews and reviewers.
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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