THE MOTHER OF ALL WEEKS

MAY DAY MAY DAY! IT'S EASTER AND THE WORLD IS GOING CUCKOO!

I wonder when the last time Easter was so chock-full of news, like a confectionary egg bursting with cream? Perhaps in 1916? Maybe I am naïve, but it seems the past week has been nightmarishly busy with lots of dreadful things being decided or done by awful people. The fact that more than a few of them claim to be "Christians" only makes it all the more confusing.

Anyway, Trump went ahead and exceeded the ego limit. He dropped the Mother of all Bombs - a MOAB - a sadistically OTT bit of TNT that was pure theatre, and is even described by the US military as "designed to instil fear in the enemy" - which sounds like terrorism to me. Anyway, this bomb, even too big and nasty for Dubya to use in Iraq, got blown up over a mile radius. We can only imagine how many innocent farmers and shepherds were destroyed in that instant. This blog approves of some calculated, precision, targeted strikes, in just wars, but such broad-church blasting is ungenerousoly expansive. It is murderous sprawl and dumb as shit.

Then in Turkey the dictatorship tightened its grip, when a "slim majority" decided to let their leader become a ruler and stay on until 2029. He immediately used the referendum to justify bringing in the death penalty for traitors. Given that his definition is very wide indeed, we may start to see the sort of execution levels we get in China and the USA - worrying for a NATO ally. Trump of course congratulated the dictator-in-waiting.

I almost forgot the ongoing Korean Missile Crisis, which pits two megalomaniacs - either as ludicrous and dangerous as Dr Evil - against each other, and could still lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths if a war breaks out. Given the defiance from North Korea, and the "mad dogs" around the President, anything could happen. I myself suspect a Nixonian (Kissinger-created) doctrine of "the madman" is being deployed, to bluff, but the brinksmanship is pretty close to the edge.

And today, the British PM announced a sudden election for 8 June, in six weeks, to solidify her weak majority to go for Hard Brexit. Oddly, for a person dedicated to democracy and not playing games with politics, she is refusing to countenance any TV debates. One hopes a coalition of anti-Brexit MPS will gain a foothold, but Corbyn continues, bafflingly, to support this move (which breaks the understanding the fixed term would lead to a 2020 GE), after backing Brexit to the hilt. He is a quasi-quisling, it seems, or delusionally convinced he can somehow defeat the Tories on their own turf - strong governance.

I think there is more, including the very real possibility a very extremist person will soon be leading France.

I suppose the 1960s were crazy like this. I can't quite remember a time since then quite so fraught as now.

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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