The Price of Music

The news that most people who downloaded the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows (which Eyewear selected as the best of 2007), paid nothing for it, is a disappointment for all those hoping for a new alignment between artists, writers, musicians, and those who frequent cyberspace. I am not too worried for the Oxford band, since they will soon release the album as a physical item, on a label, and it well sell well - and they would have still made over £2 million digitally, as well. Still, it seems like a somewhat cynical, and short-sighted vote by the overall community of web-users who decided that clicking to pay nothing was a gesture of either goodwill, or even generosity.

Instead, that 2/3s click to download for free was freeloading. Freeloading is, as all flatmates who have had a freeloader know, parasitical - it ultimately kills the host. The net is a space well-suited to free material (I believe poets should share as copyleft more of their work) but it also, if it is to ever develop into the main portal of cultural dialogue which in some ways it already is, should keep in mind that in the term social networking is also the word social. Too often, anti-social networking is done, instead. One hopes this experiment on the part of Radiohead will not turn out to, ironically, discourage other bands from trying something similar (even as the pint-sized Prince seeks to penalise those online who seek to form his fanbase).

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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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"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...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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