I just completed watching all five seasons of The Wire, the American urban crime drama from HBO. You have likely heard of it, or seen it - it is a favourite among writers and poets, I've noticed. I won't rave here for long, except to say, I believe it to be the finest piece of television drama ever made, except for Brideshead Revisited (which was, after all, briefer and based on a classic novel). The complexity of the characterisation and multiple plots over many seasons, and the commitment to exploring socio-political issues is remarkable - but the ability to balance high-brow intelligence with street level accuracies, genre-busting ironies, pitch-perfect acting, and never-subsiding suspense, is unique. The Wire is a permanent masterwork, the Citizen Kane of the small screen. Utterly moving, enthralling, hilarious, upsetting, bleak, and yet curiously inspiring (there is always a bit of light in the darkness) I envy those who still have these many hours ahead of them. It is Good TV.
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?
Comments
Too many to get through really.
You are so right about "The Wire". I remember when it first came out, folks were skeptical of another "ghetto, drugs and violence" piece on American television. That attitude quickly changed after a few episodes. And I will echo Mark about "Generation Kill". Though different in storyline and characterizations, and lacking some of the sustained dramatic intensity of "The Wire", it is worth a watch.