The rise of Canada as a force of nationalism to be reckoned with is underway with the BC games of 2010. The image of our victorious women hockey players chomping Sergeant Rock cigars on the ice, or our defiant brave and noble ice skater competing in the shadow of her mother's death, signal a new spirit, in a nation that is rich in natural resources, the arts, and had a relatively small banking crisis. Canada is one of the best countries in the world to live in - and its people are vigorous, enthusiastic, energetic, and proud. More than the sea and China is rising this century. So are we.
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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