Eyewear voted Lib Dem in the last general election in Britain - and may do so again - but currently favours a greener party. Meanwhile, two brothers go to war over the leadership of Labour - Dave and Ed. Simply put, Dave is the candidate Blair wants, and Cameron fears, most; Ed is leaning to the "older Labour" supporters. I think Labour should go into a clarifying and cleansing period of opposition, with Ed. Ed was against (nominally) the Iraq War. He represents a break with the spin and cynicism of New Labour. He stands for more than a compromise the middle class voters can live with. Ed may make Labour unelectable. But I doubt that. If The Coalition proves as unpleasant as it looks to be, then plenty of voters will be ready to swing back to a new middle ground - one with just that extra bit of sensitivity to the less-well-off in society.
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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