WE BLINKED, WE CAME BACK

Eyewear is busy and not taking twenty winks, or is that thirty? Teaching, editing, publishing, writing, listening to music, and watching more TV than is humanly wise, have all taken up our time. We have even had time to fall in love with the new single by Fyfe, called 'Solace', which we recommend you check out at Youtube or whatever comes to you quickly.

The news has not all been sunny, of course. 2015 has been a shit-storm of war, killing, murder, abuse, violence, and madness. There are days I find getting out of bed tough - I have never been less hopeful for the future of humanity. If anyone is around in 2115 to read this post, I cannot imagine their life, their world, will be materially better in most ways from ours - and it is impossible to think it will be spiritually better. Humanity seems incapable of renewing itself from generation to generation - each 25 years sees the same spasms and battles, fought only in slightly altered iterations. If we lived in a world that had learned from the 20th century there wouldn't be the fighting in the Middle East and Ukraine. Blessedly, most of South, Central and North America is now without major war (after centuries of genocide removed the indigenous threats) - as is most of Europe, and Asia.

Still, I have been sickened of late by more abuse stories in the British news, more murders, and more news that the mad IS killer grew up and lived ten minutes from me.

Anyway, apologies to those who have sent in reviews for me to post. I hope to get to them soon. I turn 49 in about a month, and am beginning to feel all too old. I hope for a spring and summer revival.

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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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