The execution of Teresa Lewis diminishes the humanity of us all. It has also seriously damaged America's moral position vis a vis Iran. It seems hard to see how America can critique Iran for executing women, when it does the same itself. Particularly sad, even tragic, in this case, were the circumstances: Lewis had a low IQ (whatever that means these days) of 72 - 70 would have made her ineligible for being executed; she hired the two hit-men (who testified against her), who both received life sentences without the death penalty. Therefore, while she has died for the murders, the physical killers remain alive. There was the strong possibility that Lewis had been manipulated by one of the killers, who was her lover; and while her crime was dispassionately planned, it was not the work of a mastermind, but a clumsy grab for insurance money: shabby but all-too-human. In short, Teresa Lewis was a simple person who made a series of profoundly wrong choices, leading to the hiring of two killers. She was guilty of this, and life in prison would have seen justice done. However, executing a challenged person in such a case seems cruel and unusual. Where was Obama?
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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