I had felt I had lost my faith over the summer. Post-PhD lapse - or simply the intolerance of some aspects of the current Vatican policies - had exhausted my patience. Then I went to Mass today in St John's Wood, and was surprised to discover the Year of Faith begins this coming Thursday, October 11. A year to reflect on faith and faithlessness, on the vacillations of the spirit. Now, I can't promise miracles, but I feel somewhat renewed today by this happy convergence of my own doubts and needs, and the official programme of the coming year. Meanwhile, and just as importantly, Hans Kung, a dissenting priest, is raising vital concerns about the future directions of the Church. There looks like a very enriching debate about renewal to be had in 2013.
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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