E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG BY TODD SWIFT

Sad news.  One of the great American poets, Samuel Menashe, has died.

Sad news.  Jerry Leiber, who, with Mike Stoller his partner, has claim to be the greatest popular song-writer of the classic Rock and Roll era of Elvis, has died.

Sad news.  The Leader of the Opposition in Canada, Jack Layton, has died, in his early 60s.  Layton was a popular, remarkable political figure, who managed to do the near-impossible, bring the NDP close to victory.  He will be much missed.

August is the coolest month.  Or rather, it seems, despite its reputation for quietude, to have a lot happen in it.  However, one needs to look back, probably to 1947 and thecreation of India and Pakistan, to find another August quite as historic, on the world stage, and at home in Britain, as this one, in 2011.  Indeed, it would seem likely to say that, more or less, since August 1945, 2011 is the most fraught.  That's 64-66 years ago.  This August is seeing the apparent liberation of Tripoli and hence Libya, at last.  It has seen the riots in the UK that shocked the world (it was daily news in France where I have been this last fortnight).  And it has seen global economic turbulence that seemingly foretells the "decline and fall of the West" as Time put it on their cover.  With over a week to go, what else will this most august of months have to offer the world?

slow  The dog days of summer are coming.  Eyewear is taking a break, and will be back to regular duties whenever he sees fit.  In the meantime, don't expect many updates, but there may be a trickle, now and then.  Lazy ways, lazy days.  Have yourself a good 'ol time!

15 Years of the SPICE GIRLS
by James Christopher Sheppard
It’s exactly 15 years since the Spice Girls burst onto the British music scene with ‘Wannabe’ and stormed to number one. In July 1996 an unknown all-girl pop group were suddenly all over television and radio promoting a song more pop than pop itself, about really really wanting a zig-a-zig-ah and friendship never ending. The sentiment was fresh and girl power was born. The group were hard to miss, with each girl having their own individual style, which at the time was practically unheard of in the pop world. Prior to Ginger, Baby, Sporty, Scary and Posh, the commercial music industry, particularly in the UK, was dominated by indie pop bands like Oasis, Blur and Radiohead, the super divas Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, and boybands that dressed the same like Take That and Boyzone. Despite their beginnings as a manufactured group, Geri, Melanie C, Emma, Melanie B and Victoria broke away, wrote their own songs, got themselves signed…

It seems almost like a different age, but it was only 75 years ago today, August 3, that Jesse Owens - my hero and candidate for greatest American - won the 100 m sprint at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, shaming the racism inherent in that most evil and grandiose of settings.  Owens, whose own life was not a bed of roses after his triumph in Germany, returned to an America unable or unwilling to accept African-American excellence, poise and achievement - and, these days, that sounds sadly familiar (I watch from afar as another great man, President Obama, is under-appreciated by too many Americans).  I read about Owens when I was a kid.  Although Canadian, we were taught to read using the Lippincott Readers, which emphasised American history; well, so be it.  I was brainwashed.  But I learned much about my neighbours to the South, not all of it bad.  Anyway, throughout my life, whenever facing hurdles, I have thought of the great Owens.  Of course, Owens was human, not an angel.  He smoked…

A Little (Less Than) Kin but More Than Kind:Kangurashi No Arrietty (Arrietty and the Borrowers)

reviewed by Sophie Mayer
“I left my childhood in the garden green”: the haunting refrain of Cecile Corbel’s ‘Arrietty’s Song’ is first heard in the opening minutes of Studio Ghibli’s film adaptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, when the voiceover narration aligns the viewer with Sho, a young boy with a heart defect who is being sent to spend the summer with his Aunty, in the house where she and his mother grew up. From the opening, the film has a sense of melancholy loss similar to The Virgin Suicides, an unusual mood for a children’s film. The mood is borne out by the story: Sho’s illness is left unresolved at the end, and Arrietty – the Borrower whom he meets in the house – is leaving with her family. Leaving the house, and leaving Sho.
In many ways, the film does everything it can to induce the viewer to want another ending: one in which Sho’s friendship with Arrietty, his courage in t…

Sad news.  The English writer Stan Barstow has died.

Catherine Woodward reviews Pure Hustle By Kate Potts
Pure Hustle is Kate Potts’ first full length book of poetry.  It is a collection about imagination, a theme which she explores from multiple angles, but her predominant theme would appear to be the role that imagination plays in the process of memory making and understanding human experience. Making memories and understanding events involves some creative effort on our part, we use imagination to transform experience into recognisable, meaningful narrative sequences; in Pure Hustle Potts tunes in to that portion of the mind that creates as it thinks and explores miscellaneous events in terms of how they are imagined. The findings are quite exciting. Reading Pure Hustle is a strange, Through the Looking Glass sort of experience, the imagined landscapes of many poems are metaphorised versions of our own world, the world turned image to greater or lesser degrees, the same but different. Potts has us looking at the world under the laws of i…

Want to feel old?  Generation X the book is 20 years old - reading it yesterday on the tube it might have been from the Great Depression.  Hard to remember a young adulthood without the social networking of now.  MTV is now a dinosaur, of course, turning 30 yesterday.  Music Videos are on YouTube.  Not the Telly.  But When I was 15, at the dawn of MTV, it was great to be alive, and to see songs acted out so wildly and imaginatively.  My favourite - the quintessential MTV video - with all the silly excess that entails is Animotion's 'Obsession'. 'Flesh For Fantasy', 'Relax', 'Like A Virgin', 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World', 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), 'Addicted To Love', 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me', 'Maneater', 'With or Without You', 'I Get Weak', 'Electric Avenue', 'C'est La Vie', and 'Take My Breath Away' are some of the other greats. How to celebrate?  S…