The news that the Coalition is scrapping NHS Direct is shocking, and bad news for anyone who gets sick. Last year, when ill, I called NHS Direct, and was able to speak to first a nurse, and then eventually, as I needed to, a doctor. The service was courteous and informed. Now we will be directed to people with 60 hours of medical training instead. In the week that the Camerons enjoyed excellent NHS service in Cornwall, such a blow seems low and mean. And many lives will be lost, as misdiagnosed persons are left untreated or misguided - misdirected from the care they deserve.
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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