A NEW POEM BY TODD SWIFT ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BECOMING A BRITISH CITIZEN

THE BEST I CAN DO

Please don’t kick me, I’m down

Please don’t tickle the urchin, I’m down

Please exacerbate the kiln, I’m down

Please light the tundra, I’m down

Please alert the mastodon, I’m down

Please kindle the vertebrae, I’m down

Please geographically locate, I’m down

Please tendril the obo, I’m down

Please play the pipe-cleaner, I’m down

Please order the zucchini, I’m down

Please butter the platypus, I’m down

Please dust the penumbra, I’m down

Please grapple with logic, I’m down

Please staple the orange, I’m down

Please fling the Listerine, I’m down

Please invent the zero, I’m down

Please sand the biplane, I’m down

Please wrap the sausage, I’m down

Please decorate the grinder, I’m down

Please vegetate the astrodome, I’m down

Please flood the playschool, I’m down

Please wrangle the horse trader, I’m down

Please lift the ball gown, I’m down

Please pulley the minstrel, I’m down

Please dance the tambourine, I’m down

Please blackout the ashtray, I’m down

Please spin the gargantuan, I’m down

Please speculate on the divine, I’m down

Please spatula the diamond, I’m down

Please dear the mine-field, I’m down

Please forgive the tiptoes, I’m down

Please kiss the impermeable, I’m down

Please layer the tropical, I’m down

Please sunbeam motility, I’m down

Please clown the Humvee, I’m down

Please terminate bathos, I’m down

Please live up to Hercules, I’m down

Please litigate the first frost, I’m down

Please coagulate all beacons, I’m down

Please investigate the pollen, I’m down

Please solve Rapunzel, I’m down

Please scatter empty promise, I’m down

Please kettle-bell sweatpants, I’m down

Please listen to me sweetly, I’m down

Please fillet my sweetbread, I’m down

Please levitate my bone shop, I’m down

Please sway my two-tones, I’m down

Please wrack my diphthongs, I’m down

Please mascot my tumbleweed, I’m down

Please rocket my lip-gloss, I’m down

Please lock my locket love, I’m down

Please leave the party soon, I’m down

Please part the leaves, I’m down

Please water the hairdressers, I’m down

Please book the palace, I’m down

Please plate the glassblowers, I’m down

Please outskate the biggies, I’m down

Please cut a deal then scram, I’m down

Please flower the piss-pot, I’m down

Please monopolise the moon, I’m down

Please drive me round and round, I’m down

Please wear shades and salivate, I’m down

Please swoon at rhymes, I’m down

Please buy Alaska, I’m down

Please drown the reticence, I’m down

Please squint the matchstick, I’m down

Please kid us we’re fine, I’m down

Please glove the asparagus, I’m fine

Please stop the hyperplasia, I’m fine

Please stop the downswing, I’m fine

Please note I am writing this, I’m fine.

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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