Poem by Bert Almon

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Bert Almon (pictured) this Friday. Almon, a Canadian poet, has published nine collections. His latest book, A Ghost in Waterloo Station (Brindle and Glass, 2007), won the City of Edmonton Book Prize. In 1995, he won the Writers' Guild of Alberta Poetry Award for Earth Prime (Brick Books).

Almon has been a Hawthornden Fellow and a major prize winner in competitions like the TLS / Blackwell's Poetry contest, and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition.

He has taught at the University of Alberta since 1968, and twenty-four of his poetry students had published at least sixty books.

Readers who wish to read witty, stylish, and intelligent verse, should seek out Almon's poems.

The Muse In The Surgical Theatre

My muse watches with the transplant team
as they wait for the exuberant moment
when the first golden drop of urine
forms at the end of the cut ureter
of the newly-grafted kidney

Then she smiles behind her mask
remembering the day that Pegasus
dug his moon-shaped hoof
into the slope of Mount Helicon
and the first drops of water
formed in the Hippocrene Spring

My muse doesn’t flinch or turn away
as she contemplates a drop of urine
so absolutely pure
that it falls without harm
into the body cavity of the patient
Now the surgeon can finish the work
that looked so much like violence

poem by Bert Almon

Comments

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...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

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

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