Hard to imagine in London's blazing Indian Summer, but the record-releasing end of year season is soon upon us. Albums come out 24-7 these days (I am over-Spotified with checking out all the new stuff), but there are some unusually thrilling appearances on the horizon: 50 Words of Snow by Kate Bush (any new work of hers is a major event); Florence + The Machine's second, Ceremonials (she is shaping up to be a major figure, a new Bush); a third woman of musical gifts, Canadian Feist, has her second work out this month. And of course albums from Coldplay, Radiohead, and Peter Gabriel are also intriguing options. The Noel Gallagher project has started well, with a fun single, so that's to look for, too. And, left-fieldish, a new Thomas Dolby double-album in late October. Meanwhile, some of the best recent albums are Pajama Club, Wilco's The Whole Love, St. Vincent's Strange Mercy, and Again Into Eyes by S.C.U.M. not to mention the new Kasabian. 2011 is shaping up to be a very good year for music. Should I add there's a new Pixie Lott coming too? Meanwhile, we have to wait until 2012 for the 13th U2 - hopefully it will flip its web-shooters and swing city-blocks away from that maladroit musical.
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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