I was away for a few days in Somerset for a friend's wedding. While there, human life, in all its horror, broke out across the world, oddly clashing with the sunlight and champagne of a rural English marriage. Norway's madness, Chinas' train collision, Amy Winehouse's senseless death, and a serial killer ex-Marine in the US, as well as several other tragedies, alongside the famine in Africa, seemed to render an already-fragile sense of optimism shattered. Yet, here I am, it is Sunday, it is sunny, and I am writing this. The world wobbles on. I will post more on some of this later.
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 was wondering where you were. I hope that you had a pleasant time in Somerset - one of England's prettiest counties. It is true that the excrement has really collided with the turbine during your absence!
Best wishes from Simon