Is it just me, or do others expect a Michael Jackson resurrection? Part of me - no doubt the anti-Dawkins, credulous part - suspects Michael is not in fact dead, has faked his death, and that this is the most extraordinary hoax in human history. If indeed Jackson rises from his gold coffin, then he will fulfill biblical prophecy. He would be, I guess, the beast, or anti-Christ, a moonwalking evil twin of his former self. Jackson was large in life, vaster in death. I am impressed with his King Tut majesty. His name and fame will outlive all poets, and even the stars and sun, and moon. Music is great, those who express it perfectly, perfect and immortal. May he rest in peace, beyond all nonsense.
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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