What is the Role of Intelligence in Poetry?
A few days ago, I got a letter from a publisher, a publisher I respect and like, one of those contest letters about all the manuscripts they received this year, what they thought of them, yadda yadda.
I had a hard time getting past a line or two in the middle of the two page letter about intelligence in poetry. "As for intelligence-of course we assume that a poet is intelligent. And she should be. If not, no hope for anything beyong intelligence. But the person we really want to be...
I had a hard time getting past a line or two in the middle of the two page letter about intelligence in poetry. "As for intelligence-of course we assume that a poet is intelligent. And she should be. If not, no hope for anything beyong intelligence. But the person we really want to be...
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Celia
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Jun 17, 2010 06:13PM
I like to think of this in terms of kinds of intelligence. I want my doctors to be intuitive moreso than simply smart. You can know a lot and yet not be able to put it all together. And there is a certain kind of poem I hate that just amasses intellectual references with no intuition either. Just because you reference some obscure painter in a poem doesn't mean you're deep! You must have both a heart and a brain to be either a doctor or a poet. Or both, as Williams Carlos Williams so aptly proves.
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