For my 2,251st post, I'd like to remind poets based in Britain, born in or since 1970, that I am editing an anthology for Cinnamon Press and Oxfam, to be published later this year or early in 2012, which will feature the work of Young British Poets (YBPs). To find out more, check out the Facebook event, which you can sign on to; and/or join the group as well. Deadline is May 1st. I am looking for new, or unpiblished poems, hopefully, but will accept published poems if the poet retains copyright. As I turn 45 soon, this may well be my last act of promoting the "young" as I may need to start supporting a "middle-aged generation!. (-:
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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oh, what was that very cool black & white image of a dude in shades with a different naked lass reflected in his lenses you had up a couple of days ago? god that was cool!