Sad news. My favourite film composer (along with Bernard Hermann), John Barry, has died at the age of 77. Barry was the genius behind the best of the James Bond scores, as well as Born Free, Dances with Wolves, Midnight Cowboy, and many others. His lush and romantic harmonies and melodies helped to establish the unique soundscape of the 60s and 70s. His sound style will live forever.
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
Really?
I'm not disputing that. However, it will surely LIVE, not love, forever in that case.
Might as well remove these posts now.
A fine musician, but personally I prefer Morricone,