Arguably, tall-lighthouse started it (and their Helen Mort pamphlet is a PBS choice now). In Britain, the last few years have seen the irresistible rise of the poetry pamphlet (chapbooks). Oystercatcher, the recent winner of the Marks Prize, is a prime example of such a superior press - one that publishes vital and needed poets, often sidelined by an establishment view that is partially obstructed. And, more recently, Faber's poets series is introducing, with mentoring, exceptional young poets, too. What does this all mean? Poets now often plan for, and publish, their first works in this smaller, often tighter and more compactly vital form, before expanding to a first "full" collection. More poets get the chance to stretch their legs, and reach readers, critics, and family. Perhaps aided by the Internet decade just passed, there is nonetheless something pleasingly physical and often DIY and down to earth about these brief books. No wonder the Guardian is offering free pamphlets this week, of Romantic Poets.
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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Ian Brinton