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. 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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