Verse Play by Ben Mazer

Eyewear offers an excerpt from a new verse play by Ben Mazer. Note that typos etc are intentional.

A City of Angels

Act Three, Scene One.

One month later. A barn outside of town. Tom Cross and Sam Cross drinking.

TOM.

What movie do you say you want to go to tonight. I don't I want to stay in and kill Briggs. I meant Cross. I mean Crick. I'm Cross. Yes Cross. Specifically what kills the critics is the surfeit of success. It is not being looked at, it is looking over. I must kill a Cross. Crick. There I go again. This is not the half, not the double. Not the halve. No language no speak. To kill a Cross or Crick, for a Cross, a Cross. And another Cross before you look. It is no trick of a Cross to kill a Crick.

SAM.

Yes, but how do you propose to kill him? Would it be a simple way?

TOM.

Shall I give you a sample.

SAM.

Do You be Cross.

TOM.

I'll shoe you know punctuation

I am not taking liberties

or libertines for that manner

SAM.

A Cross. A Crick. No I see Nothin in it.

TOM.

Damned if I'd be

SAM.

What do you see

TOM.

I see - shut up !

Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? They've got one newspaper, one magazine of any value, a literary magazine, and that is where this play will receive a favorable review, and it will be trusted and admired by intellectuals, and we've got one shit Crick up our ass. The whole lot of them.

SAM.

I see where this is going.

TOM.

You don't understand the milieu. They have gatherings of the students in the libraries where this sort of thing is read and discussed. But that's not where things are really happening, no. There are foolish people in high positions of power who have influence over popular opinion. It is a problem for literary people. But you and I don't care for all that. Our eyes are in a sharper focus.

SAM.

Tell me the story again of the Crick girl and the to be bride of the Crick.

TOM.

Twas on a moonlight avenue

I met that dreaded parvenu

like paint if a painter paint

moonlight and flowers

and herb scent

I waited for the hours

I weighed the hours and the weynted

then between the trees she appeared

but in front of the tree I was looking behind

at first I was oout of breath from being frightened.

I say this appear. I say this appears. Excuse me, what was I saying?

Draedful song. The evening hammered at me like a city

astride the ocean, like in south of Spain.

I can't forgive the tide of time that hires the midnight hour,

soar or spire, soar or sour, till the end of time. To time come.

All adjoins adjourns. Immured ammured. Commenceth.

And out wallow night poppycock by the lamsboro gate.

So much for meaning. They say he has sold out

because he's timed the opening with advance

notice in this little raggy paper

where poets publish poems and undergrads

spout off how art makes for better lives.

But we know that it doesn't.

You and I know that.

SAM.

Yes, but I like hearing it because it makes me know that I'm here.

TOM.

That is neither here nor there.

SAM.

It is here, but it will be there.

TOM.

It is not just the smell of the leather arm chairs that gat me

or the diplomas of the years on the walls

nor the flowers that fill every chair

green plush colored or tawn

times will be lives

what lives in me

lives in no man

They'll amplify the maps and views

of a thousand little people

who fall on the streets like acorns in the autumn.

Now is the time to sew the summer seed.

Easter proper. To martyr their review.

And I meet him in a room with people.

I'll know this John Crick in another world.

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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