Skip to main content

APOCALYPSE NEW



I am back here from some personally challenging times, health-wise, including having a three-wire device implanted into my heart, a large blood clot on my heart, heart failure, and Covid twice in past two months. But enough about me. Recently I went on my first family vacation since the pandemic, and it was truly wonderful to see my brother, sister in law and godson. To swim. To even sip a bit of sangria.

Anyway, since I have been gone, the Ukraine war has increased in ferocity, and tens of thousands of people have died in the battle between Western liberal freedoms and the alternative autocratic vision; we have a European drought the worst in 500 years; polio back in London's water; Trump a martyr to the FBI and likely to be the next president; a China threatening Taiwan; and the worst economic slump in the UK in over 27 years, leading to severe fuel shortages, and a crisis for families trying to pay their bills, with inflation at 10% and rising and 5 quarters of recession on the way. Plus a lot of other horrible things, but the fact nuclear war, global warming, and new variants and viruses loom over us all, as well as heat waves, monkeypox and troubled governance, seems a lot.

I don't know what to say. Fortunate to be alive, and to be able to afford a holiday. Deeply concerned about the future.

Be well, be safe. Be good.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

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.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".