I met with my doctor today to review my chronic condition, an Oxford-educated specialist, and a charming, elegant, and unflappable man about as likely to panic as the Rock of Gibraltar. He advised me to get the new three-in-one influenza vaccine soon, as he has seen the latest government estimates. While the current rate of infection is approximately 22 per 100,000, it will grow tenfold or more in 2011, and is set to overtake the epidemic numbers seen at the pandemic's height in mid-2009. As healthy people under the age of 65 can die from this influenza, it seems worth being concerned. However, vaccines, too, have their risks, however slight (and somewhat vague). I am therefore, as a hypochondriac of sorts, between a rock and hard place.
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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