POETRY FOCUS: POEM BY MCMILLAN

Eyewear is pleased to offer its readers a poem by the very worthwhile younger British poet and critic, Andrew McMillan, who just a few days ago gave us such a good review of the debut from Emily Berry. Now here he is with a cento poem for Thom Gunn, incidentally one of the most under-rated British poets of his time and one of Eyewear's favourites.

saturday night

a broke Cento for Thom Gunn

bedless and hungry the nights pull drags me

to a street it seems I only half knew

and now paid up stripped off and towelled

I prowl the labyrinthine corridors

and think that everything I read in Gunn

or watched in porn was true bodies of men

line the walls and I feel the ceiling drip

and have a sense of being underground

no air that doesn’t smell of someone on

the breath of someone else and when I call

your name to slow you it comes out strangled

as in a mine… dim light the many floors

the private cell we visit first the man

who keeps on shouting that we shouldn’t fall

asleep then on to the TV benches

the bays the heat the tape’s explosive sound

reminders of the club that we climbed up from

and then heard in the distance as we walked

and you said we should try here where we could see

people still entering though it’s 3.a.m

and wound up here sitting on an L shaped bench

watching a film that could have been of us except

I lacked the guts of the two boys flashed up to us

stripping at lockers and with a towel tied round

leading each other into each other

into the hair and the fold of stomach

and the wet smells of underneath and then

stepping out hot for love or stratagem

I sit and watch another man approach

you and then start to kiss you and blow you

and I realise I am forever

pausing at thresholds (wonder never ends)

looking without wanting to join or help

and I ignore a denimrough advance

from my right and I don’t want any or

all here of any looks of any age

I want my bed given over for use

by someone else’s love what’s mine tonight

to be just mine and a world where not all

will get whatever they are looking for

I remember once waking and looking

over to the window of my lover

from a room that wasn’t his or mine lost

or something close the rapture they engage

in the tipping over

inside and spilling out

lacks happy longing it’s

renewable each night

I go soft from overthinking we go

back to the cell to have another try

and hand to your throat I slowly begin

to build a city never dared before

playing someone else I throw you down kiss

from where my hand is gripped to where yours is

I try to be what’s expected but it

dies without reaching to its full extent

and I slump back against the wall rolled

shoulders and I don’t know if the success

I hear through the wall is real you stumble

at least in the endeavour we translate

our tongues to speak for us and we just stay there

chest to risen chest like two beaten wrestlers

who failed their potential Gunn was right

their skin turns numb, they dress and will depart

this was only ever for a night

there is nothing but the chemical smell

of trying to get clean the awkward look

the perfect body lingering on goodbyes

I leave walk back into early streets

I let the play go on beneath my feet

the night’s been drank the sun is low the sun

cannot find strength now for another start

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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