The 2011 Oscar noms have been read out live on BBC radio. Good news that we all knew would happen: Gary Oldman for Best Actor; Meryl Streep for Best Actress. Of the directors, good to see Woody Allen there, and Terence Malick, two geniuses, as well as the brilliant Scorsese and Alexander Payne. In terms of Best Film, it seems likely a toss up between The Artist, The Help, or Moneyball - though War Horse may slip in by a nose; Midnight In Paris will be a sentimental loser. Big missing film: Drive, the second-best film of the year after Tree of Life. Also, nothing much for Tinker, Tailor, given the early hype. The Best Supporting Actress nod will likely go to The Artist; Best Suporting Actor perhaps to old-timer Max Von Sydow or Christopher Plummer - what amazing careers these guys have had. Nothing for the dog. That's Wuff!
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?
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