NEW POEM BY TODD SWIFT II

COMPOSED DURING A CHORAL RECITAL IN LONDON

I have gone further out of myself

Than music allows

Setting words to music

Is a barbarism

You do not plate gold

On gold

The sheen overdoes

Creation

This voice exceeds time

Which does end

Despite oceanic claims.

I am beyond myself

In brightness

Of suntime and daynight.

Overcrowd this lucid vault

For a choir is born

Without fault

For Christ to listen to

On his return.

Which cannot happen

While time loiters

In the antechambers

Of the moon. I am a style

Happening to you

Despite your refusals

As if a god took you for

His own enjoyments

In a feathering triggerpoint

Of lit rage. Stage set

We die of plague to rise

With buboes drained

Pretty as the babe

Who all ovations bow to

In choral nazarenes of flow.

I raise a vocal range

Mountainous as Mars

To say you need no addition

When a lyric full throat

Takes on the freight

Of stars and plains and seas.

There is no green greener than

The sung span of your own

Boygirl tongue of fiery peace.

March 2015, London

Todd Swift

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....

"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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