> Clever is when the poet is clever enough that the reader doesn't notice
Why wouldn't you want to notice it, though? What is it about visible
cleverness that you find offensive? Why is cleverness compromised by being
noticable?
I remember being furious with the heroine of _The Demon Headmaster_ (yeah, I
know, no sense of proportion...) for pretending to be less brainy than she
really was; it might have required some ingenuity on her part (and as the
story went on it turned out to be essential to her survival), but it seemed
to me to concede a point I thought it was very, very important not to
concede, namely the stupid notion that cleverness is supposed to be somehow
odious and unattractive (especially in girls) and that one would do well to
disguise it with more pleasing scents.
Although this is perhaps a bit of dishonest appropriation on my part, I've
always felt somehow involved or implicated in the debates among the gay
community about "visibility" vs "the closet". It seems to me that the wider
culture has simply got it in for clever people (to the point where it is
plainly acceptable to offer vague threats of violence to anybody who gets
caught out sounding too smart - "try talking like that anywhere outside your
cosey little academic enclave and you'll most likely get a punch on the
nose, matey"), and that however clever it may be to adopt ingenious
disguises, to flatter, connive and appease in order to get by (and maybe
work some secret subversion into the bargain), it is nevertheless also a way
of dishonestly going along with something that should ideally be trenchantly
refused at every opportunity. Ostentatious cleverness is one way of showing
that one doesn't accept the values of the snobs and bullies who bash queers
and swots and boast of their own narrowmindedness as the ultimate blazon and
seal of "normality". One often suspects that the person who routinely defers
to said snobs and bullies and gets away unscathed is secretly entertaining
nasty little daydreams about exterminating the brutes, which is not clever
at all.
- Dom
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