WHO CARES WHO THE NEXT JAMES BOND WILL BE WHEN WE HAVE CRAIG TODAY?

i.m. Douglas Barbour who died yesterday.

Been a while since I thought a poem was a pop song

Instead of a Walter ppk to the heart of the superstructure,

Interrogating the very concept of linguistic designer thoughts;

A poet never changes their spots, just their t-shirts, the ideas

At the core of a human are not easily ironed out with ironic

References to transhumanism, or Mao; no, we can smell fear

Of losing the bank vault to the Beagle Boys, we know when Herr

Nobel really likes the boy with the bowl cut, or the red lingerie.

It’s a deontological low point when Django Unchained may be

A cogent argument against slavery, and history isn’t; but

That’s a filmic nostalgic revenge fantasy; we have to save

A planet from ourselves with only The Poetics, and conflictual

Arguably biological imperatives driving cleavage between

The nation-states and free-floating transnationals in the way;

We know more words than we can fathom ways out of the sack

The kittens, which includes us, are in – the Rawls Ideal Kitten

Sack theory of Justice – but it took Oakeshott to put poetry

At the centre of a disinterested worldview; some conversations

Aren’t about power, or me and you, or the science of bees,

Though all of these should be truly engaged with, and co-determine

All actions we choose to claim we decide when we kill with a spy

Sent to do the bidding of an elected democracy, give or take a few

Computer alterations of the ballots along the rocky road to freedom.

I’m unclear on what it is we need to do to overcome our own resistance

To what needs to be done, and maybe happy families, love, gyms,

The earnings including bonus of a good person, can’t lead forcefully;

What if the very genre, the tropes, the dramatic shape of the play,

Is the problematic issue? The ideology of ideologies, the fact of speaking,

The art of artifice, the ability to make shit up, is the stumbling block?

My cat owns zero property, is a year zero creature, unshaped by much

More than breeding, instinct and how he’s been cuddled since birth;

So even animals, then, are part of the set of objects controlled

By ideation’s desiring hands, the caresses of want, supply,

And superfluous demand. Petrol is missing, anger soars, Volvos halt

The army comes out, to deliver the gold dust that runs

The world; how will a universe without fossil fuels go?

I guess the battery kings will collude with the electricity kings,

Who will intermarry with the waterfall kings, and the wind kings,

And the electric cable kings, and the rare mineral kings,

And the kings who design five-time-faster than sound rockets,

And these will decide who gets the manuka honey, who fiscally

Owns the Labradors, the Persians, British Blues, Siamese,

The Pekinese, and all the other behaved pets we will still call ours,

When we run out of things to own, when we have no murderous

Needs in our societies’ wince-inducingly compromised hearts.

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

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...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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