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

prepared for February... Historians may be forgiven for finding January 2020 more stuffed with signs and wonders, horrors and events, portents and peril, than the entire Game of Thrones arc; not yet over, this month has given us, unbelievably: - a week of thinking there'd be a World War 3 triggered by an American strike on Iran's top military leader; - the tragic downing of the airplane flying from Iran; - the crisis of the British Monarchy triggered by 'Megxit' and lingering concerns over Prince Andrew's lack of testimony; - Brexit (see next post); - ongoing fires and environmental disaster in Australia; - The Trump impeachment and the Republican failure to be non-partisan in the Senate trial; - the novel and deadly Wuhan virus becoming a global emergency. I know I am missing more memes, meaningful deaths, earthquakes, and accidents. The trend is not an arc towards justice, but to chaos, ethical duplicity, corruption, war, and environmental destru...

It will not surprise readers of this blog to learn that we are not major benefactors of Trump's campaign for re-election, or that we hardly favour his usual tactics or rhetoric. Even by his own standards, however, the threats of the past few hours have marked an escalation into territory more usually occupied by the Taliban, or other notable war criminals. The threat to destroy 'cultural' targets of value to the Iranian people and their civilisation, aside from anything else, is repulsive. Its barbarism is, frankly, against the grain of any optimistic hopes left to the human race in the few decades left to us. Should such destruction be visited upon museums, ancient or sacred places, monuments, or other national treasures, the whole world will be impoverished, both morally and culturally. Trump's behaviour of the past few days - beyond Nixonian - is beginning to confirm the worst fears many had upon his election - that if threatened he would stoop to Nero-level...

2020, one wit has already said, 'is cancelled'. The joke, which is only about as funny as a swallowed switchblade, stems from the fact that, less than a week old, someone thought Greta's name was Sharon, Trump triggered a potential WW3, and Australia is facing its worst-ever natural disaster, etc. There wasn't much of a 'Boris Bounce' to the fresh start of a new decade - human idiocy and cruelty seemed to continue, like a never-ending Netflix series. Trump's decision to execute, with extreme prejudice, the top-ranking Iranian general (a de facto second in command of that nation) in Iraq (with the usual barely-considered collateral damage) was shocking for two reasons - one, it is not usual Western military policy to (openly) assassinate top-level leaders and generals; and two, this is likely to escalate a simmering conflict into war. It was also, ethically, and anthropologically, a pretty depressing start to a new decade. This is because, we have mayb...

TERENCE TILLER’S LOVELY SHAPES OF RHETORIC : AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS COLLECTED POEMS   Terence Tiller died in 1987, in December; 29 years later this autumn his Collected Poems is to appear, on his centenary. His poems, often explorations of love and desire, and often set in Egypt during World War II, are almost the poetic equivalent of the Bogart-Bergman film Casablanca . Tiller, who is more or less a forgotten figure now, published three volumes with the New Hogarth Library in the Forties. Poems was the first of these, from 1941; his second was The Inward Animal , from 1943. His Third, Unarm, Eros , from 1947, completes a trilogy of wartime poetry arguably unequalled for its extravagant lyric modernism. One of the few contemporary critics to write on Tiller is Andrew Duncan, who emphasizes the sensitivity and sensuousness of mid-century poetry, especially Tiller’s. Tiller ‘seems to have devoted much time to writing poetry which was sexy and romantic’. [1] Duncan al...