Alan Baban - poet, writer, medical student - was at the Modern Canadian Poets launch last night wearing the best geek chic eyewear I've seen lately, and after we went out for some talk and dinner (I don't eat before events) the subject of the year's best music came up - Alan is a music critic for cokemachineglow, and we're lucky to have his comments at Eyewear, too. Anyway, he's heard a review copy of what is apparently going to be the kick-ass album of 2010 - Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The reviews so far have been ecstatic - as if this was Pet Sounds-Thriller-Okay Computer as second coming. Let's hope so. If it is, it will confirm my suspicion that this has been the best year for popular music, ever. The new effects that can be achieved in production, combined with the new immediacy of transmission, have led to the scene breaking open in so many ways, sounds, and styles, that the cornucopia has become narcotically, insanely enveloping.
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
The best CD I've bought this year was Eliza Doolittle. She is like Lilly Allen, only better.
My wife hates it but I love it!
Best wishes from Simon