I have a few recent appearances in good publications that I wanted to brag about. Well, that's honest. First. the new Poetry London is out, with a review of mine regarding the new Collected poems from Bloodaxe of Tessimond, and Bernard Spencer. Secondly, I have two poems in the humongous and long-awaited Fulcrum, issue 7, from America. I have not yet leafed through either periodical in great detail, but will, in time. Fulcrum is thicker than the St-Lambert phone directory, so that may take me to Christmas. And, good to see Mr. Gross on the cover of Poetry London.
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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thanks
martine