England Was Dreaming

Well done to the England football team and its manager, whose playing got them to the first final for an England football team since 1966, 55 years ago. True, they lost at Wembley, their iconic home, in the finals, against a surging and vibrant Italian side of brilliance, but they accomplished much, with decency and boldness.

Sine the loss, the shocking levels of racism still extant among England fans, and the English, towards Black players (and presumably others) has been revealed, thanks, ironically, to incompetent (or deceitful) or complicit tech firms whose ability to sell us things instantly seems unable to block our uglier side, while profiting from seemingly reading everything else about our behaviour and thoughts.

By taking the knee against the booing, the England team, like the crew of the Starship Enterprise, enables us to see a future, possible way of being our better selves, and as such, their heroism transcends the rather cruel penalty kick ending to the jubilant tournament.

They all deserve all the knighthoods and prizes the strange brittle world has to offer, but they are already Kings of our hearts, and they get better every day in comparison to those who claim to speak for them, the ignorant crass yobs of hate, whose games are far lesser, and will not be praised in the annals of glory.

Sometimes, losing is winning, and this time, it seems so. The murals are defaced but are replaced by hearts.

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

Search This Blog