Forgive me thinking that the NASA satellite threatening to scatter deadly bits and pieces over populated areas of the Earth later today is an apt Damoclesian symbol for our current age - the Age of WTF. We are currently living in a sort of limbo, or suspended state of emergency - bad stuff, or weird stuff, seems just around the corner. Our world economy seems on the brink of a second Great Depression; environmental chaos looms; in the UK, universities and hopsitals are in breaking-point flux; societies are unravelling; and even the speed of light seems no longer to obtain. I confess to being more than a bit anxious about what's to come.
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?
Comments
I was a bit concerned to learn that one's chances of being hit by this NASA satellite are considerably higher than winning the lottery. I can think of quite a few places where I'd like it to land but perhaps I'd better not name them!
Best wishes from Simon