One of the most intelligent Americana singer-songwriters of our times is Anais Mitchell. Her song 'Young Man In America' is an epic dramatic monologue - "everyone will know my name" - of the rise of the eponymous American - and his disturbing ambitions for power and love - as if penned by Theodore Dreiser. It feels timeless, essential, very poetic, almost biblical, and relevant to this age of fiscal corruption. Two more songs to go...
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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