Sad news. Sebastian Horsley, the Soho artist, drug addict, and blaspheming sex-writer, has died. Few people have attempted to live to its logical (or illogical) conclusions the alarming role of the decadent dandy - a fusion of Wilde, Crowley, and an opium-eater - with the discipline and sartorial charm of Horsley - a friend of a friend of mine (Louise Bak) and someone I met recently at the launch of Cosmo Landesman's book. His play had recently opened. A shame he closed his own book so soon.
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, it's a real shame particularly with Alexander McQueen dying earlier this year. We have too few genuine eccentrics as it is without losing the ones that we have. At least he will be remembered - unlike most of us!
Best wishes from Simon