On the 9th anniversary of 9/11 it seems the conflict, pain and confusion generated by that critical moment in world history only proliferates with the passing years, unfortunately, as intolerance grows in America. I offer a link reminding readers of the free Nthposition anthology I co-edited in 2006, which features poems by Charles Bernstein, Paul Hoover, Ruth Padel, Elaine Feinstein and John Tranter, among many others. It is also available as a printed book.
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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