Elizabeth Barrett Browning died 150 years ago today. At the time of her death she was the most famous woman poet in the English language, and perhaps the most popular, period. It might be instructive to all of us, today, Picador poets on down to the smallest of small presses, to keep that in mind, because in 150 years - in 2161, the middle of the 22nd century - how shall our reputations fare? Bluntly, no one really reads even Mrs. Browning anymore, in any depth, except for students of her work, academics, and the readers who come across her most famous sonnets, in mass market anthologies. There is hardly a craze. Christina Rossetti and Dickinson have fared better. And yet, her legend, and her name, have endured. In today's Evening Standard Michael Meredith defends her husband from slurs he killed her (and does so handily). How does time render us humble? Let me count the ways.
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....
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