NOVEMBERS - NEW POEM

NOVEMBERS

Sometimes with elections

They get so exciting

We all forget we’ll die.

There we are, riled up,

Jeering or elated,

Having lifted some stranger

Into temporary powers,

Like building a kite from red paper.

It isn’t fake. Artifice

Doesn’t pulse or quake quite like this.

This popcorn puke razzmatazz

Is life, this is what stinger it stings with:

Ignorant events, trombones, hot cries

In the angry morning.

Don’t fret at earthly delight.

Soon a new candidate will rise.

Campaign volunteers jig under balloons

Drifting down like war-ash.

Bunting in barns, banners, betrayal,

All shifting, afterwards, gathering

Some place only diligent post-Dillinger FBI

Archivists care to find, in boxettes marked Y

For Yore. To say it’s functionless is a lie –

It mattered when it did, to us, in the Then.

Time’s like a ballot box, empty, then filled

Importantly, then counted out then taken away,

Then empty all over again, for a while.

It’s annoyingly infinite, the ways to describe

What we shed by having to change daily,

Importance is a thing with sides

That constantly skew sideways, open

To an eternity that has no clear definitions.

Things get going, go useless, grow new planks.

Those ships with high white sails going fast

Are now autumn trees, replicas for bored tours,

Each one a losing victory, standing to be corrected.

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"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...".

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