Skip to main content

New Poem by Todd Swift

Another Poem Making Important Claims About Language, Sort Of
  

Frankly, tedious
how this becomes that
with a twist of tongue;
drop of the hat; lingua
spat out; nowt
here for us, they say
up North.  Aboot
becomes about

if you go South;
house is unhomed
in what a word does.
And every poem claims
as much – the splendour
in the hiss, the Sibyl
of sibilance; the affront
of click or grunt.

The lyric is linguistic;
how oeuvre is work;
a quirk makes cheval
hoarse in a new throat.
Don’t go out much,
old words.  They’re ancien
regime.  It all seems
spoken more than heard.

I’d make a point,
then point at a sign,
then use my fingers
but that would be Helen
Keller’s sort of thing;
and I’m too dumb already
to sing absurd.
No speak Anglesea.
Labels:

Comments

Anthony Hopper said…
Interesting use of the English language (and exploring nuances and divergences within the language).
Tue Dec 11, 08:27:00 pm 2012
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
15 comments
Read more

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....
3 comments
Read more