It was a strange night for politics in Britain, and a sad one. The EU election results are Labour's poorest since 1918 (beaten in Wales and Scotland, with far-right parties getting a toehold), with less than 16% of the popular vote. Eyewear feels the only way forward for Labour is radical and dramatic renewal, instigated by drastic change at the top. That this likely won't happen only redoubles the Labour tragedy - and the potential destruction of the party for a generation is a tragedy - and it likely won't because a) Brown is stubborn enough to cling to power until next May and b) his peers and MPs seem so demoralised and/or craven as to resist the bold steps necessary. This means Labour is dead on its feet - like someone stuck at the edge of a diving board, shivering, unable and unwilling to climb down or make the leap. It seems obvious that any leader would be better, since Brown cannot communicate with human warmth and will never win voters around now. Someone else just might find a bit of that Obama spark. Meanwhile, the right is gaining ground in Britain, and looks set - in more or less acceptable forms - to be driving the agenda for the next decade (much as they have this decade, anyway). What a mess Blair and Brown - that unfunny duo - have got us into this time. But then, since at least 2003, they've been abandoning all of Labour's core values simply to curry favour, anyway.
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?
Comments
On the plus side, too, some years in the wilderness might well have a galvanising effect upon the Labour party. At the moment, I'm not sure if a new leader would solve the problems in the party, or assuage public dissatisfaction with how the government's been operating, but a few years down the line a British answer to Obama could be a very liklely possibility, and an exciting one.
Simon Turner, Gists and Piths