2010's second half promises to yield even more poetry books, and books on poetry, that will surely be must-haves for many, including the new Sampson, new Heaney, new Muldoon, new Jo Shapcott, and a new Larkin Selected, from Martin Amis, as well as debuts such as by Adam O'Riordan, and new books from Gillis, Michael Harris, a British Selected for Robert Bringhurst, Bergvall's New and Selected Texts, and more. The more would include the Best American, and Best Canadian, anthologies, and the Forward 2011 book. Gosh. Not to mention the Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology. Meanwhile, this interview with WS Merwin from PBS was lovely.
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?
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