The Coalition in Britain - that unlovely beast - is selling off (privatising) The Royal Mail. This is a tragedy, and one that Eyewear the blog opposes whole-heartedly. The postmen and postwomen of the UK are a lifeline, and a wonderful friendly presence in an otherwise increasingly atomised world. My own postman calls me "bruvver" which is very good of him. His cheery smile is part of my day. I shudder to think what will replace these people. Meanwhile, Eyewear encourages readers to send in poems they have written, that somehow refer to Royal Mail.
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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