The Big Turn On: Not With A Bang

The BBC news (radio 4) had live coverage this morning of the turning on of the variously-named machine that will measure how the universe began. After the muted cheers and handclaps of the scientists (mostly, alas, men), champagne was passed around. It felt like the moon-landing, but somehow in reverse - all the fun was being had in the control room. This subterranean, coiled monster of an experiment may destroy the world, later today, or sometime soon - or instead merely explain how it was created.

In many ways, it recalls Eliot's poetry - the murder and create dichotomy is strong with science. Hopefully, our end will not, though, be in our attempt to find our beginning. It's been said, by the media, who like metaphors they can sleep with, that this is like a "cathedral", and that the search is for a "god particle" - but science, more often than not, peels back the layers where the onion god makes us cry, exposing less, not more.

What will the first things of the world be like? Meanwhile, let me suggest another sort of experiment. Take down and open an anthology of 20th century English-language poetry. Read its massive 1,000 plus pages. Tell me the mind and emotions of men and women are not engineered by souls. The spark of God is in language - poetry already curves us back to the big bang everytime it runs well, widely, true and around.

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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...".

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