The race has heated up - for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry. Geoffrey Hill, England's greatest living lyric poet, seemed a shoe-in, facing pint-sized opposition, until, the contest was revitalised and refreshed by the news that another poetic elder statesman, Michael Horovitz, had entered. Horovitz has several times read for my Oxfam series. I think he is a brilliant man - a superb poet-of-the-people - who has done more for the Beat strain of poetry in the UK than any other single human being (I mean, as opposed to organisations or groups). He loves to encourage others. He has a big warm heart. And he knows his poetry. He's right to challenge the other lesser figures running, and right, to, like Clegg, give the leading horse a run for the money. This isn't, now, a race I'd want to call. Hill is the master elitist of English letters, and Horovitz the ultimate English maverick, the advocate of almost everything Hill is against. As a fusion poet, I'd want the best of both poets - but of course, in the real world, often, he who stands in the middle of the road gets hit by two-way traffic.
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
When is Lord Motion going to toss his trilby into the ring? I've greatly missed having him in the public eye. Carol Ann Duffy is almost invisible by comparison.
Best wishes from Simon