Gerry Rafferty, who wrote and sang one of my favourite songs, 'Baker Street', has died. Sad news. His other major song, 'Stuck In The Middle With You', was prominent in Reservoir Dogs.
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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My second serious girlfriend Rosamond Harrison gave me a copy of 'City to City' for my birthday in 1978 and from then on I was hooked. I bought all his other albums myself. I knew that he had become an alcoholic recluse but was hoping that he would be able to make a comeback which unfortunately never happened. He was a gigantic talent who will be sadly missed by millions of his devoted fans including me.
Best wishes from Simon