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

Tom Chivers - poet and unstoppable force for poetic good in the UK - has started up a new magazine - literary and for the digital age, called Hand + Star . It is already looking to be one of the places readers wanting to keep up with the increasingly exciting New Decade of British Poetry will turn.

The recent news in the UK has been filled with the planned "smear campaign" from one of The Prime Minister's Men - a plan to use a blog to spread gossip and innuendo to destroy rival politicians in the Tory Party. Eyewear found it odd how alarmed and shocked the media was at this (a little like the Casablanca moment when Louis discovers gambling in his casino). Anyway, for poets it was no news at all - since poetry-related blogs and "listserv" networks and sites have been spreading nasty, often anonymous criticism and worse - sometimes character-assassination - for years. A good example is this one from Poetry Snark , about me. It's pretty crass and ignorant stuff. And that's the tip of the iceberg (the Titanic sank today, in 1912). Poets sometimes claim they batter each other to hell because "the slice of the pie is so small" but that makes little sense - competition only gets nastier the more there is at stake, not the less (see presidenti...

Eyewear has over 70 "followers" currently - but I feel the term is misleading. That's because they're leaders themselves. Most of them have their own dynamic literary blogs. The blogosphere, for all its faults, does run on sympathetic energy, in many ways. Eyewear also is regularly read by hundreds, often thousands, of other readers each month. Increasingly, it's one of many places for writers, especially poets, to meet. I just wanted to step away from the droll persona I sometimes adopt and express my appreciation for all your support over the last few years. Keep leaving comments. And, as always, I welcome reviews and reviewers.

The Guardian has a slogan online: "comment is free". Too true. I've noticed, lately, that sometimes articles appear (in print) in The Guardian , and other papers, a few days after the same ideas, even phrases, and images, have circulated, freely, in (on?) the blogosphere - including, a few times, at Eyewear . Most recently, today, columnist Mark Lawson has a piece on the poet laureate, referencing John Sergeant , Obama (not normally two subjects linked, I'd have thought) and other comments that strongly echo my post of a few days back on the same subject. Coincidence? Surely. However, bloggers are doing a lot of the unpaid gruntwork these days, it seems to me, for the "professional" media commentariat, and, since we all know (from plagiarism cases on campus) that "Googling" can get results, fast, it is surely time that some credit is due, when whole arguments or themes are lifted, verbatim, from popular blogs.

The Guardian online has noticed Eyewear had a literary debate with Sean Bonney , recently, and mentions it within the context of literary feuds. It's a fun article, and good to see. However, the criticism in the post, that I sometimes write on this blog in a sort of postgraduate-speak misses the point: sometimes I do, sometimes I don't - and the flexibility not to have to speak like a mouthpiece for Comrade Stalin , or Adorno trashing Jazz, is the difference in the world between those who think Goethe was a rebel or a philistine. He, was, of course, both . Hence, complicated, and neither. Eyewear believes poetry can be, variously, fun, engaged, and postmodern in its reference to pop culture - but it doesn't have to be. Poet-critics like Bonney have a bee in their bonnet about what Poetry Has To Be . Such diktats don't do poets, or poems, any good. Poetry should be ethically engaged, indeterminate, linguistically innovative, or lyric - as it wants. Style is the key...

I wanted to highlight, for my readers, a section from some comments published by one of the regular readers of Eyewear , Sean Bonney , a UK poet, who writes: "I do always read your blog, and have at times wondered if you are some kind of satirical fictional character. pompous, essentially dim, but in your imagination the James Bond of a poetry world that is simply too ungracious to recognise your genius. like most stupid people, you imagine that you are highly intelligent, because you cannot conceive of an awareness and perception that goes further than your own limitations. Christian Bok, by the way, is an imbecile. he's almost as bad as you ..." I'd leave this as "no comment required" - but these comments show the level of malevolence that is generated from the conflictual system at play in British poetry. Particularly striking is the dismissal of one of the very best experimental poets in North America today, Christian Bok . Eyewear , isn't, of course...

The poet and journalist Jonathan Morrison has weighed in at his blog on the rise of a new wave of little magazines published by younger poet-critics in the UK, not least of them being the original, feisty Wolf , whose latest issue, #17, seems to be the best yet (especially because now it is perfect-bound, and ever larger). There are good articles on the new Ted Hughes Letters , and Mina Loy , as well as poems by Andrea Brady and others of note; and a fascinating interview with the poetry editors of Carcanet, BOA, Bloodaxe, etc. The Wolf's advisory panel is impressive, too: Carolyn Forche, John Kinsella and Robert Minhinnick know what they're doing, and also have an important eco-eye on things.

There is a scene in Control which must be the funniest moment in a movie about a suicidal epileptic nihlistic musician. His manager comments to his depressive friend, "at least you're not the lead singer of The Fall". Ron Silliman can always take comfort in not being part of "Official Verse Culture", though as his famous blog wittily (?) observes, his cohort, Language poet Charles Bernstein seems to have been ushered into that frame recently. Silliman's Blog recently reached the "over a million burgers served" moment refered to in the title of this post. That's good for poetry, and good for the blogosphere. Bravo.

The Observer today reports on the vicious cyber-bullying that has been dished out to the son, Max Gogarty , of a Guardian travel writer after he was given a prestigious blog space on that paper's world-famous site, accused of benefiting from nepotism, armed with middle class bona fides (the UK media world is often thought to be rife with such things). What strikes me, immediately, is how odd it is that this young man, and this rather common incident, suddenly receive such attention. Might it in fact be because, indeed, his father is well-connected? His father, after all, has written many travel articles for the paper in question, and the many bloggers who began to ask why they should be excited to follow his son's gap year hols had a point, surely, though some may have pushed it too far. His father is quoted as noting the quintessentially cruel nature of this bullying. Well, actually, no. The British can be cruel - but the online community, in general, is no stranger to snarl...

This is my 840th post at Eyewear (give or take, some have gone by the wayside). I confess to being agnostic about blogs - the fact I have one should not be considered a ringing endorsement. I blog, therefore I am in the blogosphere, but where that gets me, or you, or anyone, is another matter. I think that this uncertain (or to be more stylish - say problematic) genre which is a blog leads to errors in reader response - though, how can any reader ever be really wrong about their own reaction? It is my experience that the Internet is not a cool medium. Or do I have that inverted? What I mean is, it evokes strong, near-instant responses. Blogs are emotive. They employ and discharge feeling - in that sense, they are like elements within poetry. But blogs also use (usually) prose, and are informative, and discursive - hence, the rational patina of much blog writing. Still, the writing may appear calm and cool and collected, but the impression, of a reader, upon finding their name, or book...

Eyewear would like to disagree about blogs with the author of The Death of The Critic , who is chairing a panel discussion on the subject at the ICA (London) on 4 October . According to Dr. McDonald , writing in The Guardian yesterday, "there has been a tremendous democritisation in response to the arts". He argues that the death of the commanding (and professional) critic - one who, like Leavis , or Greenberg , has the authority to make large statements and champion artists - has been in part reduced by narrow academics, and also the tastes expressed by bloggers. He asks, "can we rely on the bloggers to bring vital if alienating art to a wide audience?" - and then sums up, "without critics of authority, the size and variety of contemporary criticism may ultimately serve the cause of cultural banality and uniformity." This seems wrong, for a number of reasons. Chiefly, it is wrong about the nature of blogging, and bloggers. It is a common mistake, for t...

Scott Rosenberg has an article in today's Guardian about how blogging is, in some ways, turning ten this year - and how that relatively impressive anniversary has yet to convince blog-haters of the inherent literary, or other, value of the form. He notes, particularly, how once-countercultural-guru-and-white-dressing Tom Wolfe (now apparently just as bland as the Man from Glad) is dismissive of people who write blogs, and the blogs they write. As Eyewear has been quick to observe, these last few weeks - and more generally since starting this blog a few years ago - the UK, while innovative in so many cultural and technological ways - has been stuck in a neo-Edwardian moment, poetry-wise, in relation to the web, and blogs. Bluntly stated, poetry on the Internet is still a second-class citizen, in British and Irish literary circles. Why? There's a one word answer that fans of the American 60s comedy-action series Get Smart will recognise: Control. The larger, mainstream publi...