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

David Lynch has died. Perhaps the last time an American death of a cultural icon was so massive was the loss of Warhol . This blog is of the opinion that David Lynch was probably the most significant global artist of the past 45 years; perhaps only David Bowie  approaches his immense contribution to multiple senses of art forms and identity in this period, and had such ubiquitous impact. But Lynch, more even than Warhol or Bowie, or any other film-maker of the period, was consistently and openly also an artist, musician, painter, and writer/visionary. To call him a "surrealist" barely does him justice, and is in many ways misleading. Lynch's transgressive visions were sometimes dreamlike, but controlled evacuations from the underbelly of the conscious/unconscious divide in the psyche/soul - demonic expulsions, like solar flares, or toxins released in the bloodstream; his dreams are never entirely merely random or absurd (like Dylan Thomas serving string in tea cups). Wh...

Despite, and because of, our debates and differences of opinion, I had great fondness and respect for Roddy Lumsden , the poetic genius, who has died. When I first moved to London, we worked on editing each other's poems for a few months; he several times read for the Oxfam series and other events I hosted, and I read with him on many occasions. One always could learn from Roddy, he knew more about everything than anyone else. I am very shocked and saddened by this sudden news, and all I have to say is here: https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/blogs/news/major-scottish-poet-roddy-lumsden-has-died You should seek out his poetry collections, and his poems online, you will discover one of the funniest, and most clever poets ever born in Scotland. His death is a sobering reminder that poets in this angry age need to remember to love and support one another, and seek less to divide, and more to join, the common enterprise of creating poems of long-lasting value to others.

It is perhaps no surprise that most ( not all, thankfully ) film critics have praised Tarantino's latest (9th) film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... as a masterwork - I have seen it even called Shakespearean - a term that comes from a scene in the movie; but he is more a Jacobean Middleton. Tarantino's late career has been focused on revenge - one of the primary staples of drama and melodrama in all English literature; it is also, of course, the staple of Nicholas Cage's late career, so it is not an inherently perfect one. Violence is to Saint Quentin what bars are to San Quentin - the raison d'etre. I cannot think of another director - not even Peckinpah or de Palma, Hitchcock or Scorsese - so cocked and aimed in one direction - that of setting up and paying off scenes and situations so that 'all hell breaks loose' and terrible violence ensues. Tarantino has argued - often publicly and coarsely - for an art for art's sake separation between reel violen...

TOXIC MALE GAZES REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT Orson Welles was a magician - not a necromancer - but the joke about resurrecting the dead is in every frame of the Netflix released THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, his best movie, yet. Welles, foremost an artist and a charlatan (he was obsessed with tricks, fakery and illusion throughout his visionary work for stage, radio, and the screen), would have known that nothing is as haunting as the posthumous work. Only the truly great get to come back from the grave. Of course, Welles famously crafted his late-period film-as-process oeuvre and praxis from his inability to get financial backing, and the way his final forays were often left unfinished; after a while, his unmade movies took on more weight and anticipated value than the ones he had completed. Yet even here, the story is faked. Welles always (except in KANE, usually considered his masterpiece) left his work unfinished, more or less - often intentionally, or accidentally. His signature st...

THIS MAN KNEW WHERE ALL THE BODIES WERE BURIED IN HOLLYWOOD.... I was sexually harassed by an actor when I was a young teenager, after going to an audition with him, so the recent revelations about the great and the good of Hollywoodland and its outlying tar pits were hardly going to leave me cold.  Like a lot of people online at the moment, each accusation against a star, producer or TV actor, ricochets all over the place. But none of the downfalls has hurt as much as Kevin Spacey's . I have taken flak online the past week for criticising the cynical, and to my mind, Orwellian, decision to reshoot film history and cut Spacey out of the new Ridley Scott Getty film. The Onion had a joke about the whole industry being repopulated with Christopher Plummer clones (some began to misbehave). Even to mention sadness at the news that Kevin Spacey's acting career is over was apparently tantamount to mourning the death of Satan. However, I have a long and complicated relation...

With the death of the poetic genius John Ashbery , whose poems, translations, and criticism made him, to my mind, the most influential American poet since TS Eliot , 21st century poetry is moving into less certain territory. Over the past few years, we have lost most of the truly great of our era: Edwin Morgan, Gunn, Hill, Heaney and Walcott , to name just five.  There are many more, of course. This is news too sad and deep to fathom this week.  I will write more perhaps later.  I had a letter from Ashbery on my wall, and it inspired me daily.  He gave me advice for my PhD. He said kind things about a poetry book of mine. He was a force for good serious play in poetry, and his appeal great. So many people I know and admire are at a loss this week because of his death. It is no consolation at present to think of the many thousands of living poets, just right now. But impressively, and even oddly, poetry itself seems to keep flowing.

HE BROUGHT POST-WAR AMERICAN POETRY TO BRITAIN IN A VITAL WAY British poet of genius and cultural significance, Tom Raworth has died after a long and protracted illness, aged 78. Writer, artist, teacher, and publisher Tom Raworth was born in South London and attended the University of Essex. In 1970, he earned an MA in the theory and practice of literary translation. As founder of Matrix Press and co-founder of Goliard Press, Raworth was instrumental in bringing an entire tradition of American poetry to English readers. Promoting the work of a number of poets associated with the Black Mountain School, including Edward Dorn, Robert Creeley , and Charles Olson , Raworth also published the poetry of Elaine Feinstein, Aram Saroyan, Anselm Hollo , and Zoltan Farkas .   Raworth’s own work has also been identified with the Black Mountain School. He wrote over 40 collections of poetry, among them The Relation Ship (1969), winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, Eternal Se...

PLATH IS THE MOTHER OF US ALL, IN SOME WAYS TODD SWIFT ON STRANGER, BABY BY EMILY BERRY (FABER, 2017) "ANXIETIES OF INFLUENCE, THE CONFLUENCE OF POETIC RESPONSES TO BEREAVEMENT" I hesitate to call this a review - it isn't - it's an appreciation, and a comment. I should say that I think  Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry   is one of the best books of British poetry you are likely to read in 2017; and that it seems to me to be at once better, and slightly less good, than its predecessor, Berry's feted debut, Dear Boy , whose title similarly played on various meanings. I once was Berry's "poetry tutor" - for several key years in the now-famed MAIDA VALE GROUP I ran through the POETRY SCHOOL - other members included Liz Berry , Helen Mort and Phil Brown . I recall seeing almost all the poems in Dear Boy in early stages. I have seen none from this new manuscript, though I predicted, even urged it to appear, in my several reviews/essays on Dea...

Aside from our personal losses, 2016 was the year when everyone apparently began to socially mediate the death of beloved others - famous people known universally, or to many. No other year - not even 2001 - since the new century began, has been so reviled by those living in it. Fuck you 2016 was a common refrain.  The year almost became a running joke, coming to symbolise all that was mean, unfair, cruel and random about existence - it was the most existential year in decades. certainly, the death of so many talented, brilliant and creative persons underlined the compelling fact that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE, SOONER OR LATER, no matter what. So we better get right with ourselves, the world, and decide how best to deal with the fate we have been thrown - stoicism advised. Claims that no more well-known people died than usual this year are basically besides the point (THOUGH the BBC now reports 50% more celebrities died this year than in any other on record) - in the se...