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

Drive , the new Ryan Gosling film, whose director won at Cannes this year, is one of the most purely satisfying big screen experiences of this century - a movie so stylishly aware of its intertextual tire tracks, each shot, each scene, is writerly bliss.  From the neon pink, garish titles, and robo- Moroder soundtrack, to the 80s-noir "erotic thriller" blue lighting and slat-shadows, this LA-set Car Opera is just Shane updated, by way of American Gigolo , Scarface , and To Live and Die In L.A. - in short, it is a Western updated via several layers of homage and pastiche. Indeed, the major scenes are pure Shane - the monosyllabic outsider entering the endangered family of father, mother, and son, and, despite the love of the wife and son, heroically using his latent, concealed dark abilities (gun play, car play) to defeat the bad guys, sloping off mortally (?) wounded into the sunset, slouched on his horse/in his car.  Even the toothpick is pure cowboy. There is al...

Katherine Lockton  reviews Changeling by  Clare Pollard Clare Pollard’s fourth collection Changeling takes on myths and monsters and places them in the world of CCTV, Youtube, and Heat in order to tackle more serious subjects such as world politics, child famine and gangs. This collection moves away from the confessional tone which marked Pollard’s earlier writing towards a more thematic and political writing. Pollard takes us on a journey where we must “hang on tight and not let go and not let go.”  A master of rhythm, Pollard manipulates lines by slowing them down or increasing their pace as a means of highlighting and making more serious points easier to digest. One of the aspects that makes this collection stand out from Pollard’s earlier works is her ability to ask important questions in a subtle yet direct way. She doesn’t preach her own political views but rather opens ideas up for discussion. As she points out “if wrong feels right, then what are y...

England is enjoying the hottest October 1st on record today - it is set to be 29 Celsius in some parts.  With the sun comes a sense of simple satisfaction: heaven to be alive at this time, in this place.

It must be time to drop the idea that there is a genuine "debate", or an "ambiguity" about whether T.S. Eliot was a hater of Jews - a tedious tricksy attempt to deflect any responsibility for such unpleasant, wrong thinking, in and out of the poems.  Great American poet he is.  But he was as Anti-Semitic as they come.  This has been amply demonstrated by the letters of his now published (see review in the New York Time s  from which I quote): 'Eliot’s anti-Semitism is luridly on display. He refers to a “Jew merchant” and allows himself pronouncements like “I am sick of doing business with Jew publishers.” It’s damning that such remarks are made only to those who safely share his prejudice. Yet Eliot relied on his friends Leonard Woolf and Sydney Schiff , and as appalling as his anti-Semitism was, it never matched that of his wife (“horrible Jews in plush coats by the million”) and his mother (“I have an instinctive antipathy to Jews, just as I have to certain...

A statistic from the paper the other day.  How many babies were adopted in the UK last year?  60.  That is a jaw-droppingly small number - given the number of children needing to be adopted (the thousands), and the number of loving potential adoptive parents waiting (also thousands).  There are many problems with the system, not the least of which is the excessive care taken in trying to find racially-similar parents - a pity because there is something beautiful about multi-racial families.  On average, a child takes 2 and a half years from entering the system to be adopted in the UK.  That is too long.  I have a radical proposal - cut the wait down to zero.  If someone applies to adopt, let them adopt.  By fast-tracking the initial process, the child gets into a home, and the caseworkers and social workers can then observe the child in situ carefully with the parents (vetted of course for serious criminal records beforehand), rather than car...

Any reader in Britain, of serious literature, might be disheartened to learn that sales of the recently short-listed Booker novels are, for the most part, in the low thousands (one of them has sold around two thousand copies); meanwhile, most poetry collections sell less than a thousand copies.  However - and this is the funny part - memoirs by comedians sell tens of thousands, making millions of pounds.  Apparently, this year's Christmas season, which began in publishing on September 29, features a number of comedy books, which sellers hope will hit the jackpot.  This may be fun on Christmas Day.  It is not good for culture, however popular.  The truth is, poetry has a particularly hard-sell in a culture, like Britain's, where the default setting is a guffaw, or chortle.  Poetry can never compete with stand-up, for even when it is light and witty, it is not Comedy; nor is poetry sex, drugs or rock and roll - the other obsessions of the marketers who peddle...

Hard to imagine in London's blazing Indian Summer, but the record-releasing end of year season is soon upon us.  Albums come out 24-7 these days (I am over-Spotified with checking out all the new stuff), but there are some unusually thrilling appearances on the horizon: 50 Words of Snow by Kate Bush (any new work of hers is a major event); Florence + The Machine 's second, Ceremonials (she is shaping up to be a major figure, a new Bush); a third woman of musical gifts, Canadian Feist , has her second work out this month.  And of course albums from Coldplay , Radiohead , and Peter Gabriel are also intriguing options.  The Noel Gallagher project has started well, with a fun single, so that's to look for, too.  And, left-fieldish, a new Thomas Dolby double-album in late October.  Meanwhile, some of the best recent albums are Pajama Club , Wilco 's The Whole Love , St. Vincent 's Strange Mercy , and Again Into Eyes by S.C.U.M . not to mention the new Kasa...