Splendid news. England's finest living poet, Geoffrey Hill, has been elected the new Professor of Poetry for Oxford. This practically papal position de facto renders Hill the most-esteemed elder figure of a crowded field, that stretches down its influence, to such "modern classics" as Fenton and Motion. In short, he is confirmed as what he has been, in all but name, for years in the UK - part of the triumvirate of living greats of English, along with Walcott and Heaney - and, by extension, Ashbery, if one wants to include American poets. Hill is grander than all these, openly wrestling with religion, politics, and ideas, in a more rhetorically ornate and high manner - the Miltonic tradition. He is therefore a suitable follower-on from Ricks. A note on Michael Horovitz: it is a pity he received so few votes (though over 300 is not an embarrassment); he would, if Hill had not been running, a good choice himself - and he ran a spirited and enjoyable campaign that brought proper attention to alternate strands in British poetry.
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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