New Poem by Philip Hancock

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Philip Hancock's new poem this sunny September Tuesday. His poems have appeared in journals including: Magma, Nthposition, Oxford Magazine, Poetry London, The North, The Rialto, and The Spectator. Hancock's debut pamphlet Hearing Ourselves Think was published by Smiths Knoll (2009). A selection of his work will appear in Carcanet’s forthcoming OxfordPoets 2010.

Demolition of the Power Station

Coming back up the A34, counting

how many pylons. The cooling towers

where the white clouds are made, always there.

A black-tipped chimney, zigzag ironwork,

slanted conveyors. Squat transformers

fenced in. Flashing NCB lorries,

white-hatted Dinky men.

Dynamite day: crowds stand behind barriers.

Their mouths come open, thick dust

boils up and up, and through the clearing

for the first time what lies beyond:

the backs of houses, light green fields,

horses easing up, a line of poplars.

Now the open curve of the new road,

the billboards for retail and office spaces,
families strolling by lakeside apartments,

but the sky’s a blankness, nothing but weather.

poem by Philip Hancock

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....

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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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