POEM FOR SNOWDEN #12: STREET

Conscience

The meaning is there, if that's what you want.

(Merce Cunningham)

Shades of silence, and the ear

asks questions the mind can't answer.

Taking a turn filling a temporal frame,

something anonymous that now has a name

is reading the mirror, a face

returning once again to a place

where truth could have been shared out when

curating gardens a child was planted in.

Circumstance removed the born centre,

took out the fixed point to enter

other rooms, now sensing conscience

in this space, in its absence.

Seán Street

Seán Street has produced eight collections, the latest of which, Cello, was published in 2013 by Rockingham Press. His latest prose work is The Poetry of Radio – The Colour of Sound. Previous writings include books on Gerard Manley Hopkins and The Dymock Poets. He is currently working on a book exploring the relationship between sound and memory, to be published in late 2014. He is Emeritus Professor of Radio at Bournemouth University. In this role he has written several key texts on radio history, including A Concise History of British Radio, The Historical Dictionary of British Radio and Crossing the Ether – Public Service Radio and Commercial Competition 1920 -1939.

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....

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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