Take a look at the news today: bomb in Omagh; murderous riots in Afghanistan triggered by insane preacher in America; civil war in Libya; in Cote Ivoire; unrest in Yemen; Syria; radiation leaks in Japan, etc - does it not seem particularly dire? Well, yes and no. 1,601 years ago, the sack of Rome was pretty bad. Still - I cannot help feeling things unravelling a bit these days. We must have faith. Steady as she goes. Courage. But human nature is not impressive, altogether. We should be doing more to hold things together, surely? Still, 1.2 billion people in India have common cause to cheer their peaceful victory in the great game of Cricket. So - maybe, in the artifice of play, we can locate a still point of joy after all.
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
Yes, I was delighted to hear that India had won the cricketing world cup only to have that uplifting information immediately followed by news of the brutal murder of a young policeman in Omagh. My delight turned to despair within a matter of seconds. Such, I suppose, is life.
Best wishes from Simon