Europe is on the brink. When a leader of Germany predicts that potential economic ruin could lead to future lack of peace in Europe, as Merkel did today, it is time to take notice. Greece, then Italy, and Spain, may default soon, if nothing is done. It seems an extraordinary failure of nerve and imagination, a bit like the period before World War One, or Two, when leaders dithered, afraid to act, thus ensuring worse was to come. However, there is another danger, one of too-great union - should the EU become a two or three tier organisation, with some nations fiscally joined at the hip, they may all find it more easy to stumble over the cliff together. In this way, some British caution makes sense; yet the more sidelined the Tories demand we remain, in the UK, the less control we will have over the deals ahead. These deals will be trying. Facing Europe is possible recession, or the meltdown of the Euro, or worse chaos. One must hope for the best, but hedge bets.
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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