It is now official: 25% of Americans are not just stupid, but plain wrong. When push came to shove, Mr. Obama, born in Hawaii in 1961 (making him 50ish), today produced his full birth certifcate, immediately rendering the "Birther Movement" null and void; it has long been inane. Where does this leave a quarter of all Americans? Those too dumb to face facts? Well, for a start, they can continue to think that Donald Trump is a model of good citizenship.
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....
Comments
Barack Obama isn't perfect (Bill Clinton was a far better president) but Donald Trump would be an unmitigated disaster!
Best wishes from Simon