The Poetry Library recently digitalised and put online the summer 2006 issue of the excellent London poetry magazine, Magma. If you want to see what was being written in Britain five years ago, by some of the best new and established poets, here's one way to start finding out...
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
Yes, Todd Swift's two favourite words, Todd and Swift!
Anyone posting anonymously, their name would indicate, wouldn't like anyone who wrote under their own name; so it's not just Todd they are attacking but everyone who isn't like them, writing anonymously.
This is what Swift meant, I think, when he talked about poetry being conducted at the intellectual level of the schoolyard.
Anonymous, c'mon, why don't you tell us who you are and at least have a debate. As Todd and I know because we don't mind testing ourselves and appearing a bit daft now and then: In the web-age, once you get gassing you discover that our 'opinions' are secondary to the debate itself.
If you start off with a contentious statement and anonymous people just fume about it in short one liners and the 'debate' consists of only a few hundred words, of course it looks like there's more discord than harmony between us. If we actually get stuck in and say what we think, rather than what we think we should say to 'fit in' with everyone else all acting the same way, you will find that the longer the debate goes on, the more of it there is, the more words we generate, the better we feel coz we're actually talking to one another.
It's only words, after all, we're not in the same room as each other, it's all happening at synaptic level and you find, Anonymous, the more you debate the more you coginze the core point is our 'performance'; how the Language dances and how original it is. We can't get this unless we have a go, don't mind falling on our faces. The more you do, the less you are concerned about who thinks what and we can all move forward into the lurve zone, sailor.
gra agus siochain
Desmond Swords