Nathan Hamilton's ongoing exploration of young British poets has its second iteration in the Autumn 2010 issue of The Rialto, one of the UK's best poetry magazines. Part Two of "Look Out" introduces poems by Paul Batchelor, James Brookes, Tim Cockburn, Swithun Cooper, Emily Critchley, Andrew Fentham, Charlotte Geater, Matthew Gregory, James Harrison, Emily Hasler, Luke Heeley, Ian Heames, Agnes Lehoczky, James Midgeley, Beverly Nadin, Eileen Pun, Sam Riviere, Marcus Slease, Ben Stainton, Tom Warner and Thomas Yates. I had read the work of perhaps half of these - Cooper, Gregory, Heeley, Riviere, Warner, Lehoczky, Brookes, Geater, Hasler and Midgeley were especially on my radar. Glad to learn of the work of the others. Hamilton's intro is valuable as it explores various sorts of approaches to contemporary poetry, and discusses the stylistic hybridity of the younger poets. Unfortunately, the essay is a bit undermined by typos (Don Patterson?). Still, all interested in where British poetry is going should read this issue. I look forward to the third (final?) selection.
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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