50 years ago today, Sean Connery was announced as the actor to play Bond in Dr. No. Today, the 50th anniversary film, due out in October 2012, was announced - title: Skyfall. Javier Bardem will play the main villain. It better be good. Quantum of Solace was lacklustre.
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
In my opinion, the James Bond franchise has gone steadily downhill since Sean Connery made so much money that he was able to take early retirement. It is also extremely unfortunate that some of that spoil has now found its way into the coffers of the SNP.
Best wishes from Simon