For all the whirlwind ambition and hustle of the world, Christmas Eve reminds us of one thing, if we are fortunate enough, as I am, to be at home, in a warm candle-lit kitchen with beloved family members, drinking hot chocolate, playing board games, and eating and drinking merrily - no one who is loved, and loves, and has Christmas in their heart, need ever trade places with kings or celebrities or billionaires, or famous writers, or even Queens... joy is modest and based in the carpenter's world, not the world of bombast and royalty. Ring the bells within, and enjoy what you have. The rest is the crashing of meaningless cymbals. Love to all!
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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