Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

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...".