Sad news. An age has ended, with the death of one of the great visionary British novelists of the post-Orwell era. With Burgess and Burroughs, JG Ballard can be said to have been one of the greatest darkly comic dystopian 'cult' writers of the last 60 years, inventing entirely new landscapes for a sociopathic Western society to expose and explore its drives and desires. Eyewear will be featuring a post by Patrick Chapman, one of Ballard's literary heirs, later this week.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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