Congratulations to Editor Carole Baldock, who has pioneered the intrepid quarterly international literray journal Orbis, in a difficult financial and cultural climate, to the remarkable milestone of its 150th issue (Winter/Spring 2010) - just out now. The issues features poems by Robert Nazarene, Nessa O'Mahony, William Oxley, Rupert M Loydell, and many others, new, unknown, and widely-respected, alike; Orbis is open and fair, welcomes all, from wherever. It also features good reviews of many collections, and mentions contests and magazines poets need to know about. It is a classic current little magazine, and we should thank Baldock for her work on its, and our, behalf. Orbis is the sort of magazine by which poetry thrives, despite the bigger boys and girls. One way to thank would be to order a subscription, or even a copy of Carole's latest poetry collection. Money where mouth is are words sweet to the poet-editor's ear.
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....
Comments
I had a few pieces in there in Mike's day. ;)