Peter Reading Has Died

Sad news.  British poet Peter Reading died recently.  His obituary appears today in several papers, including the Telegraph.

Ken Russell Has Died

Sad news.  The most flamboyant of British film directors has died.  His wrestling nude men will never be forgotten.

Andrea True Has Died

Sad news.  One of the great disco singers, Andrea True, has died.  Her key song, 'More More More (How Do You Like It?)' aroused great interest in my high school self and epitomises an era as well as any other song.

Andy Rooney Has Died

In my Canadian adolescence, 60 Minutes was a TV event.  These days very few things are much-watch, at the time, but this stopwatched event was such a thing, and the best of it was the lively and often pugnacious little segments that Andy Rooney ended each episode with.  It is a sad time when Rooney is no longer with us to cock a wry eye at the world and its foibles.

Angéline Neveu Has Died

Quebec writer Robert Smith contributed this obituary notice:

Angéline Neveu (1946-2011), a poet and performer, had been active since the sixties in France. She had been one of the eleven ''Enragés'' students at the Université de Nanterre, who had instigated the May 1968 revolution in France, which had culminated in a general strike. She was involved in the Situationniste movement.

This was followed by a period during which texts, music and images were entwined through the creation of books, the delivery of public readings and performances, including in the Polyphonix festivals in Europe, in New York City in 1979 and in Quebec City in 1990, as well as numerous reading performances at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, at the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris and performance events organized by Jean Dupuy in New York City in the loft of Georges Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus.

From 1979 to 1984, she created and managed the “Unfinitude” collection, a series of copy art books developed by various contemporary artists whose works are presented at Beaubourg. She was also the author of a continuous collection of object books. So far, ten of her anthologies have been published: Synthèse (Édition du Surmodernisme, 1976), Lyrisme télévisé (Éditions de la Nèpe, 1980), Rêve (Loque, 1982), Je garderai la mémoire de l’oubli (Éditions Artalect), Désir (Centre national Georges-Pompidou, 1985), Le vent se fie au vent (1994), Éclat redoublé (2002) and Âme sauvage (2004) is a trilogy published with Écrits des Forges. She worked with musicians Gilbert Artman (Urban Sax) and Jac Berrocal. The sound recordings of the performances were published with Giorno Poetry System and Artalect. A two hour documentary radio program about her work directed by Éric Letourneau was produced on the French airwaves of Radio-Canada.

She struggled with cancer for the last few years of her life in Montreal. Finally, on October 25, 2011, she succumbed to liver cancer.  

Steve Jobs Has Died

Sad news.  The industrial genius of our age - hence, a digital kind - has died - Steve Jobs, as famous now as Edison or Ford were to their times, and as influential.  His works changed the way we work, and play, and ushered in the current climate where hand-held devices, and small bits of information, define our daily habits.  He recreated recreation.  His death is also salutary for a grimmer reason - it shows the need to keep working to find cures for the various cancers that still ravage humankind.  To die a billionaire at 56 from cancer reveals that nothing is currently available to inevitably halt this terrible scourge.  It is to be hoped that some of Job's own money can now go to this work.

American Genius: Steve Jobs, R.I.P.

Michael Hart Has Died

Sad news.  The father of the e-book, Michael Hart, has died, at the age of 64.  Hart's Project Gutenberg put tens of thousands of texts freely out there, for readers wherever they might be.  A true visionary, he will be missed.

Richard Hamilton Has Died

Sad news.  One of the greats of British art, Richard Hamilton, has died.

Tom Swift Remembered

September 9th, tomorrow, is the 6th anniversary of my father's death, from a blood-clot in hospital, while recovering from surgery on his brain for cancer.  He was a kind, gentle, witty man, very shy, insecure, nervous.  But he was proud of his rise from a working-class Irish-Canadian background to become the youngest director of admissions at a North American university, in the late 60s, after leaving behind a promising music career as a recording artist with Decca and London records.  He did an excellent job at Sir George Williams, later Concordia, university.  He put students first.  He had a great voice, loved to sing, play baseball, swim, and was good with animals.  He was very loyal to his friends, compassionate with students, and protective of his family.  Sadly, he suffered from anxiety and depression, which he tried to deal with by drinking too much.  However, after a difficult period in his Forties, and after a mild stroke, he sorted out his demons, and was happily retired, for a few years, when the cancer struck at age 64.  By 66 he was dead.  His funeral  was a large event, with hundreds of former students, employees, colleagues, and friends, converging on the tiny quaint Protestant Church in St-Lambert where he had been married, almost exactly 40 years before.  His illness was painful, slow, humiliating, and he faced it bravely, and head on, enduring several trying and innovative surgical interventions, having to relearn to speak after the first operation.  Life is cruel.  My father was kind.  He is survived by his brother Graham, his wife, Margaret, and his two sons, Jordan and Todd, and their families.

Tom Swift, with my mother, Margaret, at my wedding, June 6, 2003, Co. Louth, Ireland

Samuel Menashe Has Died

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

Crying All The Time

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.

Jack Layton 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.

Winehouse, Women and Song

Nothing much left to say.  The obvious things - her joining the "stupid club" of musical self-destructive genuises of 27 who die young of excess - the tragic waste - the talent - were obvious.  The moment I saw the news, though, I was shaken.  Amy Winehouse, unlike Adele, actually was a genius - a genuinely troubled soul, with the ability to sing her heart out.  The Beatles had Martin; she had Ronson.  She declined almost as soon as she reached the heights in 2006.  Five years was a long time to falter in public, and her missing out on the Bond theme, and the broken promises and failed rehab stints, as well as the late-night punch ups and fall-downs began to create a counter-canon of pathos, or bathos.  What I cannot accept is that no one cared enough to intervene and put a stop to the ruinous life mistakes.  Too many of the tweeting names who apparently loved here are hedonistic night-livers with one foot in the grave themselves, up to their necks in dope and crack.  Conductors of chaos, they could no more get her off those tracks than halt the engines of excess; those closest to her egged her on, more than they carried her away, to a safer, saner, environment.  So - we have a handful of classic songs, likely to be standards, and a myth that's been made.  What we don't have is a living person, anymore, who could have sung to us for far longer, under better circumstances.  Fade to Black.

Freud Has Died

Sad news.  Lucian Freud, one of the greats of British post-war painting, has died, at the age of 88.  I had the pleasure to see him several times as he dined at his table at The Wolseley.  Yesterday, according to The Guardian, that table was draped in a black cloth with a single candle on it.  Freud, whose paintings sold for tens of millions, was famously linked to Sigmund Freud, his grand-father.  I recall studying his work in art history class back at college in Montreal; we were all taken aback by and impressed with his attention to genitals, and to the gross realities of human fleshiness.  Later, in London, I looked into his late self-portrait and recognized in its slashes of dark colours genius, and dark self-reflection.  Genius can be complicated, strange, ugly, and attractive, all at once, in a compelling way; the best art usually is.  I am not sure Freud was a person you'd want to meet unless you were a beautiful woman, or someone to model for him, or a close friend; he emanated a sense of danger.  I am glad to have seen him at a distance; and to have seen his paintings up close.  One of his children, Annie Freud, is one of the best English poets of her generation; my condolences to her and the rest of his family.

Browning Version

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died 150 years ago today.  At the time of her death she was the most famous woman poet in the English language, and perhaps the most popular, period.  It might be instructive to all of us, today, Picador poets on down to the smallest of small presses, to keep that in mind, because in 150 years - in 2161, the middle of the 22nd century - how shall our reputations fare?  Bluntly, no one really reads even Mrs. Browning anymore, in any depth, except for students of her work, academics, and the readers who come across her most famous sonnets, in mass market anthologies.  There is hardly a craze.  Christina Rossetti and Dickinson have fared better.  And yet, her legend, and her name, have endured.  In today's Evening Standard Michael Meredith defends her husband from slurs he killed her (and does so handily).  How does time render us humble?  Let me count the ways.

Just No More Things: Peter Falk Has Died

Sad news.  Peter Falk, the great American actor with the glass eye and the peculiar drawl, best known for playing Columbo, arguably the best-loved TV detective of popular culture, has died.  He was also a character actor known for taking challenging roles in art-house films, such as Wings of Desire, A Woman Under The Influence, and Husbands.  His first TV role was in 1957, and his last was in 2009.  In that 53 years, nothing he did equalled, in terms of sly charisma, the brilliance of Columbo, the highwater mark of intelligent adult entertainment drama on US television during the 1970s and 1980s; it was certainly always a special night when a Columbo show was on.  What I loved about the shows (as did my father) was how the unassuming, seemingly bumbling rumpled detective, who always smoked a cigar and referred to his wife, was actually a genius, more than a match for the psychopathic narcissistic killers he would eventually outwit - usually brain surgeons, conductors, authors, magicians, and other megalomaniacal professionals.  In short, he was an updating of Father Brown, removed from the ecclesiastical English context and transplanted to America.  Falk will be much missed.  His Columbo will live forever.

Robert Kroetsch Has Died

Sad news.  The Canadian author, Robert Kroetsch, winner of a Governor General's Award, has died in a car accident in Alberta.

James Arness Has Died

James Arness, who played Marshall Dillon for 20 years on one of American TV's greatest, longest-running and most-beloved shows, Gunsmoke, has died at the age of 88.  Arness, who was six-foot-six, had a tragic personal life in that his wife and daughter predeceased him due to drug overdoses.  He will be much missed but is a rock-solid part of the cultural landscape of American popular culture.

Josephine Hart Has Died

Sad news.  Novelist and poetry lover Josephine Hart has died.  Hart, along with Daisy Goodwin and Neil Astley, would have to be described as three of the leading UK poetry activists, promoting poetry to the people through their events and publications.  Hart's events in London were big affairs, attended by the general public, with the poems read out by celebrities, mainly actors and rock stars.  While I never attended one of the events (as I don't think poems do well at the hands of celebrity readers usually) there is no doubt that her promotion of poetry touched a nerve and brought poetry to many.

Perhaps poetry shouldn't need celebs and glittering venues to lure in readers; but this is Britain in the age of media and celebrity, which her husband, Lord Saatchi, helped to invent. Anyway, that's a digression.  Hart's love of poetry and commitment to it was strong.  She was also, of course, a successful novelist.  Her biggest novel was her debut, twenty years ago, Damage, which was made into a movie with Jeremy Irons performing odd acrobatic sex; though OTT as a film, it was a hit and created quite a stir at the time.  Hart will be missed.

Gil Scott-Heron Has Died

Sad news.  The great American poet-musician, Gil Scott-Heron has died, at the age of 62.  Scott-Heron was a ground-breaking artist who pioneered spoken word and rap, and achieved world fame with his 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised', perhaps the most influential spoken word/rap performance.  After years of challenge and addiction, he returned brilliantly the last few years with several albums created with a new generation of musicians.