Wow. First the PBS gets cut and now the Poetry Society is in turmoil, much like it was during the 70s when the British Poetry Revival poets briefly held sway there. In fact, the Poetry Society seems to gyrate like Gyro Gearloose, between staid blandness (the Georgian period) or some form of creative upheaval. Not a bad thing, perhaps. At any rate, blessedly, Eyewear has no opinion on this internecine struggle at the PS, because it has no insider news to report or base an opinion on.
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
Come again? I'm pretty sure that's not why members pay £40 a year for. Membership fees shouldn't be used to help increase the incomes of a select few but to benefit poetry as a whole.
This new 'focus' doesn't surprise me. Pick up an issue of Poetry Review and you'll find it dominated by high-profile poets. The board of the organisation and its trustees are high-profile poets.
But here's the thing: the PS is funded with taxpayer cash. It should not be free to promote a select few but benefit poetry as a whole to get the most bang for our buck(s). To do so otherwise would be detrimental to us all.
I agree one hundred per cent with Christian that British taxpayers' money should NOT be used to promote already high-profile poets. Morally, it's equivalent to giving generous tax breaks to the seriously rich. As I understand it, the Poetry Society was set up to help ALL poets and not simply a well-known handful.
Best wishes from Simon