There is an expression in England - "it does what it says on the tin" - and frankly, I am pleased to say that Long Poem Magazine falls into that category. Rarely has a name of a little magazine so clearly and usefully lead readers to its pages: if you want long poems, here you go. And what poems! Issue Four, Summer 2010, has poems by Jane Duran, Patrick Early, Giles Goodland, Cherry Smyth, Claire Crowther, Graham Mort and Roger Moulson, among others. I don't often write long poems. Reading this fine selection makes me want to. Buy this, and submit.
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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