I have been very moved by the replies to my post. The messages are bitter-sweet, because they both encourage me to focus more on my own work, but also remind me how many brilliant and talented writers and poets my words do reach, with this humble blog. Thank you, friends, for your advice. I shall still move Eyewear into a slower, quiter summer mode in June, and then revisit the vexed question of renewing its pre-summer levels, again in the autumn. But before then, there are still some good reviews to come.
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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