News has a way of turning on its head. A few months ago, one Mr. Assange was the daring rebel of the world's media, arguably the man of the year; now, he is one step away from a trial for sex crimes, and potentially, a death-penalty trial in the US for treason; his semi-autobiography is a dud; and he is seen for the strange arrogant man he likely is. Meanwhile, one-time Godfather of fast food, Mr. Cain, the other day the one to beat to beat Obama, is now mired in sleaze, and bumbling. The media throws such characters up the pop charts. But they do, eventually, fall.
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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