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

Dear TLS - I was glad to see a review in your latest issue (January 24) by Mona Tabbara , of The Boy From Aleppo Who Painted The War , in your In Brief section. I am the editor and publisher of Sumia Sukkar's debut novel, which is why I was particularly struck by this review. Sukkar's novel is about the Syrian civil war between 2012 and early 2013 - each chapter marks an increasingly terrible moment of escalation, from the cutting of electricity to a final gas attack outside of Damascus.  The book, filled with intertextual allusion, features many characters, but the narrator is Adam, a young man on the Autistic Spectrum. Despite the fact that Ms Sukkar is the youngest-ever British Muslim woman to publish a novel - and despite the fact this is a political novel with much to say about terrorism, violence, faith, and art - and also develops a portrait of a very loving Muslim family coping with mental health issues and also wider social struggle - anyway, despite all of th...

Irish poet-critic David Wheatley has written well and long on the Letters of Louis MacNeice - long a key link between the poetries of the Auden England and the later Muldoon Ireland - his influence as talky-yet-lyrical common man of the time with a wounded heart and a stained sleeve has made him a dour-if-erotic Anglo-Irish version of Frank O'Hara (his journals and letters ways of doing this and that with poems, instead of journalism); and he connects so many strands and styles, not least the pre and post war ones, that he can't be left out of anyone's core anthology of the last century; and a few of his lyrics are as good as anyone else's.  It is good to hear he wrote well and long himself, in the letter form.

There's a good and interesting review written by the British poet and critic, Lachlan Mackinnon , of an important new anthology of English poetry translated into French, in the July 6, 2007 issue (no. 5440) of the TLS . The book in question is from the canon-making Gallimard, and is titled Anthologie Bilingue de la Poesie Anglaise . It is relatively comprehensive, stretching from Beowulf to Simon Armitage , at over two thousand pages. According to the review, the translators (there are dozens employed) mostly get things right, and, though there are rather curious omissions ( Kenneth White ) and curiously obscure inclusions ( Michael Edwards ), the work is ultimately impressive: "the editors of this volume and the translators have achieved an extraordinary entente cordiale ." Eyewear recently lived in Paris for a few years (2001-2003) and is much encouraged by this newly-expressed interest in the English poem. Poetry is apparently less of a living form among the French...

I am reminded of Charles Foster Kane's immortal promise, "Dear Wheeler: you provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war." The TLS (missing the poems, if not the prose) recently [January 5, 2007] asked, in its oft-brilliant NB column (edited and written by J.C .) -"Where are the poets of war?" - before suggesting that one oughtn't to look for them in the anti-war camp, despite what Francis Scarfe wrote in 1941: "a good war poem must also be a good peace poem." As the TLS writes, "We exclude, for the moment, poems gathered together in collections such as 100 Poets against the War , edited by Todd Swift, and 101 Poets .... [the ellipsis is J.C.'s] edited by Paul Keegan and Matthew Hollis , the very titles of which amount to to a political agenda (the former contained new work; the latter poems from all ages). The kind of war poetry you want, as a reader, challenges your assumptions with doubt, pity, glory, even gore." There...

The TLS (NB, September 29) has weighed in on my recent anthology for nthposition, Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years after . The commentary opens: "We are puzzled by the notion, current since the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, that people resort to poetry in times of emotional distress. Poets and others of sound mind have suggested this as evidence of poetry's continuing 'relevance'. What happened to reading poetry for pleasure? Nothing could be more relevant than that." J.C. at NB then goes on to excerpt poems from Joe Ross , Tony Lewis-Jones , Pauline Michel (Canada's poet laureate), Ken Edwards and bill blissett [sic]. I am also described as "Mr Swift, a kindly fellow" for my suggestion to donate to the Red Cross. It seems an odd approach, both mildly humorous but also quizzical. Surely the idea that poetry is chiefly intended to give "pleasure" is old hat? Or rather, given that poetry is a complex art form tha...

The TLS has run a good review (in its August 18 & 25, 2006 issue) of the major new anthology of Canadian poetry edited by Carmine Starnino , The New Canon . The review, headed "Beneath the conifers" is by Patrick McGuinness . It ends with the following: "Canadian poetry deserves to be better known. .... [Starnino] has offered us a book of unusual vibrancy and range ..." http://www.vehiculepress.com/titles/398.html

On the cusp of Canada Day, July 1, Eyewear is pleased to note a new review of Leonard Cohen's latest collection, Book of Longing , in the TLS (June 30 2006). It's written by Pico Iyer (see link below), no stranger to Cohen's Northern Comforts. I am currently completing my own review, for NPR , so won't say more here. One aspect worthy of mention - the Iyer article on Cohen is under the heading "Music" - not "Poetry". Canadians may find it irritating to realise that, outside his own country, LC is not considered so much a writer-turned-singer as vice versa - as if his towering intellect had been muffled by his tower of song. http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/iyer.html

Paul Muldoon , next in line to win a Nobel prize for Ireland, the Joycean Moyean Protean Poet is a fan of Warren Zevon (pictured here, see link below) - and has just published his very own Warren Report, in the three part poem, "Sillyhow Stride", published in this week's issue of The Times Literary Supplement . The poem has lots to commend it, though (or because) it's undeniably busily weird, getting more of the world in to its triplicate lines than most issues of Mojo and Lancet combined. Indeed, its disturbing layering of Glocks, Les Paul guitars, Saints, sinners, Twin Towers, and cancer (which moved me especially, as my father has this terrible disease) makes it arguably one of the more richly interleavened poems the TLS has ever published - also, in all likelihood, the most "postmodern". Worth buying the issue for, certainly. http://www.warrenzevon.com/