The fact that the British economy is partially bolstered by the arms industry is more than worrying - it is close to horrific. There is no reason why a government should encourage the manufacture and sales of munitions to other countries - many of them at war or in conflict or likely to be. It is clear that the capitalist system profits from the making and selling of weapons; and, as the climate grows ever-warmer in the next fifty years, the conflicts over scarcer resources will only make the profits grow. The counter-argument is that if "we" don't sell the weapons then the Russians or the Americans will. This argument could extend to the sale of opium, or slaves - both evil trades that eventually the British ceased trading in. One day, the sale of weapons will be seen as an unambiguous evil. Why has that time not yet come?
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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