As the saying goes, a week in politics is a long time, and, as they also say, there are some weeks where it seems like years happen, and so it is, six weeks on from the last post, we now have an American (sort of) Pope, a new major war in the Middle East, and a US president behaving increasingly like Nixon in the late 1960s. Indeed, the current moment seems peculiarly like 1968: a criminal president, conflict in the Middle East, a major superpower war inflicted on a smaller country (then Vietnam, now Ukraine), and political assassinations, the national guard out in the streets of America, and nationwide protests. Probably the main difference is, there are fewer Maoists now, and we've lost John Lennon and Brian Wilson; but, broadly speaking, this is a hinge year and a hinge moment, and when it isn't feeling like '68, it is feeling like '39. Let us hold our breath and hope that peace comes to Iran and Israel, and Gaza, sooner, rather than later. A lot is going to depend on what Trump does in the next few hours, if he follows his MAGA doves, or his GOP hawks...
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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