The end of the world did not come yesterday, as the blogosphere, and Facebook etc delighted in reporting. A tsunami of anti-Christian jibes and jokes spewed forth. The Rapture is a beautiful if troubling idea. It is a miraculous end to the world, and beginning of judgement, that is harsh, punitive, and, obviously, unwelcoming to non-Christians. One of the most troubling of aspects of fundamentalist religions is that they are predicated on the idea that those who are not signed up will be damned. This tends to go down badly among enlightened, secular, broad-minded people who are clearly doomed to hellfire. So of course, a certain amount of mockery is to be expected when such predictions sputter out. However, the age of enchantment is over when the world assumes that such hopes or fears as a catastrophic, God-driven teleology are just silly. Yeats was silly. But great poetry can derive from seemingly mad or implausible spiritual expectations. The tissue of reason that seems to keep the world sober is torn when we imagine ghosts, or whispers of immortality, angels and werewolves; bad luck; good luck; prayer; and telepathy. We laugh in an arid space when we laugh at what is impossible, miraculous, terrible, and potentially inspired. Some day, something truly magical is going to happen. Or wouldn't it be nice, at least, to think so?
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
I couldn't agree more with Stef! I'm very relieved that the world isn't going to end quite yet as I've just ordered Lady Gaga's new CD and will be visiting the Hay-on-Wye literary festival next week.
Best wishes from Simon