I was going to title this post 'Poor Visibility" - an Eyewear title if ever there was one - but went for the more theologically resonant one instead. Odd times over the European skies today - ash is general over England, and beyond. There was a large volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday. Due to the weather conditions, a plume of volcanic ash has now spread southwards towards northern Europe and is severely affecting all airlines' flight activity in the area. For safety reasons and on the direction from Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) a decision has been made to cancel a number of flights and close all London airports. All British Airways domestic services have been cancelled on Thursday 15 April. On the BBC, they are talking about maybe no flights until Saturday, unless the ash plume, now pretty immobile, moves on. This seems relatively unprecedented, and more than a little sci-fi slash disconcerting. No eye in the sky, indeed. Iceland's revenge on Britain for the banking crisis?
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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Or karma. Anyway, I was thinking exactly the same thing at the same time! Could these events also be responsible for the strange weather all around the world now, including snow in Calgary and Lethbridge (it's almost May!), incessant sunny hot-rariny cold-sunny hot-rainy cold non-stop alternating days here in Taiwan, the extreme fog that was behind the deaths of the Polish President, etc. etc.? I really wonder.
Global warming be damned. I think we are near the end of the world. Perhaps the Mayan calendar, the interpretation of it, and John Cusack helping people to some grotesque ark are all turning out to be true.... Okay, not the last bit.