Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman (pictured above) is one of England's most charming and popular 20th century poets. It is his centenary this year. He was Poet Laureate, as well as a succesful media personality, and sold millions of books. One of the poetry albums made of his recordings was titled Betjemania, which quite accurately reflects the general public regard for this rumpled, Teddy Bear holding, lovable eccentric: taught by T.S. Eliot and Muse to Philip Larkin.

The great Atlantic drift between Britain and America yawns wide on the question of his reputation, thought it also seems up for grabs at home, too.

Arguably, Betjeman is little read or valued in America. Meanwhile, the BBC's flagship morning radio news slot, Today, today featured a rather long and winding debate, during its most valued minutes (the last ten before the nine o'clock news) on Betjeman's enduring legacy as a poet.

Oddly, one of the commentators expressed the view that Betjeman could not be considered a great poet (like Milton) as he was not very good in terms of "diction or form" - absurd claims from a North American perspective, where Betjeman's perfect English diction (his grasp of idiom, tone and style) and formal gifts (expert and traditional) mark him as both quintessentially English and something of a hothouse flower.

It was then put forth that, compared to The Waste Land, Betjeman had produced nothing of significant poetic value. The Waste Land is a famous and striking literary assemblage, but it is neither the greatest, or most moving, or most beautiful, poem of the century. While I agree that Betjeman is perhaps not in the first rank of poets, his gifts were many, and need not be dismissed quite so easily.

http://www.johnbetjeman.com/

Grass, and Higher Maths

In the last few days, several major English-language writers, like John Irving, have come to praise G. Grass, ex-Waffen-SS soldier, and novelist, for doing the right thing, and admitting to having once been 17 and harbouring urges to join the most infamous and criminal gang of war criminals known to history.

These literate advocates observe that the Nobel prize-winner (never shy of publicity) has been the conscience of post-war Germany; figured thus, anything he was to say, or do - or to have said, and done - is both apt and exemplary - and supremely literary. It seems Grass has not only mastered the art and craft of fiction - but of shaping reality, as well.

Meanwhile, other Nazi-sympathizers, such as Ezra Pound, have never been brought in from the cold, presumably because they never admitted to having joined the wrong side, or never wrote about themes of guilt - though, of course, Pound is by far the greater writer of the two. It seems not all 17-year-olds are to be forgiven - Mao will never be able to live down the egomaniacal diary entries of his adolescence; and yet again, we praise Rimbaud for his youthful works.

What emerges, then, seems to be a muddled ethics of praise and blame, depending on the weather: some young people are responsible - even admirable - for what they decide to do in their youth - and others not; and other, older writers, are responsible for what they do then too - and some are not. If Grass is to be now easily and retroactively pardoned, like one more WWI deserter, then perhaps we must absolve all young men and women - and all writers of talent - from what they do. In such a world, only the middle-aged and old (and talentless) will henceforth be punishable for their moral choices.

Meanwhile, for sheer clarity, precision and purity of genius, look to hard-to-see Mr. G. Perelman. The eccentric, reclusive mathematical master, pictured above when young, has recently declined to accept the equivalent, in the maths world, of the Nobel (The Fields Medal) and a million dollars, for having apparently solved one of the most daunting of all the puzzle's human intelligence has devised (or observed). This man has neither time for, or desire of, wealth, fame or power, and works solely - one assumes - because what he does is sublime, good and difficult - the ideal model of both scientist, and artist. This seems a more exemplary heroic model than Grass is able to present to posterity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5274040.stm?ls

Review: Factotum

Why are drunken, randomly-employed, ill-shaven sociopaths - in a low-rent sort of way - deemed to be (in brief episodic bursts) so very entertaining?

Worse, why does every two-bit "writer" model themselves on the ill-starred yet-famous Charles Bukowski?

And why is it that when arty, highbrow film-makers want to make a European-type film, they turn to his dingy-but-sex-filled life - biopic as malignant biopsy - to glorify his sad-sack existenz, shuffling about low-lit rooms with tapioca-stained wallpaper peeling away to expose infested walls while lounge music plays from 50s-era radios?

Factotum isn't a good movie, okay. But it is the perfect one to watch on TV (via DVD say) any given late evening, when drunk, bored, alone or on riveting decongestant tablets that create on-off headaches; one soon adapts, merging with the neon, the fleabag hotels, the gin parlours. It is, perhaps due to its nature, part-repellent, part-winning. It is hugely watchable, as sleaze can be.

Bukowski - as pictured in this film (just now released theatrically in America) and portrayed brilliantly by Matt Dillon (the subject of a loving recent New York Times piece) - hit a woman (which is a criminal offense); drove drunk (ditto); and smoked on the job, when not drinking. He also (not a crime but a sin) assumed himself to be a genius with a capital G - a sort of Van Gogh with two ears, one prick, and no money. He also, when paid to deliver a van of ice, let it melt, for no good reason, and never tucked in his shirts if he could help it.

In short, despite his E. Hemingway beard and handsome-if-blotched features, he was a royal pain in the Asquith. He is the sort of man, who, had blogs existed when he dawdled through the world, would have written more than one, not sober.

There is nothing heroic about having many crummy jobs - hell, I was once a copy-boy for a year. Nor is there any thing noble about getting drunk during daylight hours (perhaps the film's best scene is a set-up/pay-off on that very idea). But writing - well or okay - and getting published, well, that deserves a drink.

I hope the 78,000 rank amateur no-goodniks who can't scribe their way out of a paperbag won't see this movie (filmed with Montreal, my old stomping grounds, doing a Novak and doubling as vertiginous San Fran) and think doing serious time in shabby strip clubs with a stubby pencil and frayed yellow legal pad is a one-way trip to the Nobel Prize - but I do hope someone makes more of these sorts of movies, every once in a flickering blue moon.

On Planes

For those of us who fly trans-Atlantic - as I did yesterday - the thought that "criminals" from Britain, essentially bright young militants from middle-class families, were - in ultra-code-red fashion - intending, any day now, to set off liquid bombs on ten flights, mid-air, mid-Atlantic, en route to New York, LA, or Washington, DC - well, the thought is horrifying; and, had it happened, the crime would have been mass murder, and unforgivable.

What K-H Stockhausen unfortunately uttered in 2001 is now, in a sense, true - these crimes do not have to happen, to have impact - that is, as the odd German composer said at the time, the Twin Towers massacre was greater than art - for its power. Like the best - and worst - conceptual artists, this new band of 24 (plus the five on the run) have out-Hirsted Hirst - they merely conceive of a terrible thing, and behold - every plane traveller in the world is transformed, into a denuded creature, clutching a plastic bag, without water, hair gel or books; mothers must taste of their own breast milk to prove it is not poision. They have made us travellers less opaque.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1842411,00.html

He Made It Strange

50 years ago today, Brecht, pictured here, the greatest political writer of the 20th century (and yet arguably the one with the worst hair cut) died.

Viva Bertolt!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht

Poem by Nathaniel Tarn

Eyewear is very glad to be able to feature a poem from such a fine poet as Nathaniel Tarn, pictured above. It first appeared, in print, in The Poker, edited in Boston by Dan Bouchard of MIT and then in the book Recollections of Being from Salt (2004). It seems all-too relevant again today.

Tarn is a poet, translator, critic, anthropologist. He has led a distinguished literary and academic career studying and/or teaching at the Universities of Cambridge, Paris, Chicago, London, SUNY Buffalo, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Jilin (P.R.C.). Among some 35 books are The Beautiful Contradictions (Random House); Lyrics for the Bride of God (New Directions) and Selected Poems: 1950-2000 (Wesleyan).

He was founding editor of Cape Editions & Cape Goliard, London-New York, in the late Sixties. He lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico.


from: War Poems Yet Again

3] The Asphyxiation

Needful, while it is taking place,
that the process be invisible
both to the executioner and to the victim.
"For now, let’s say the victim is your honor,
the judge-role done with and the robe burned.
Guerilla war is universalized: the whole world
is the menace now, we see the enemy
at every gatepost: our law alone is
liberation." Kerchief, or gag, whatever,
to be as black as blackest ink,
whole face as well covered in tulle,
this black of course – as in those plays
where scene-shifters don black to sign “invisible.”
Interrogator, interrogators, to be most normal folk
such they could be exchanged for any other folk
and no one, [none, no one], would ever be
so much the wiser. Sitting
most days in offices, filing bland duties
like mostly paperwork and such banality.
All this though all the prisons melted down:
the world may witness we are white as sheep.
No one in town to know the difference
one way or either. So that, to go to town, to greet
one’s friends implies the occultation of the strangled
scream inside the throat that swallowed gag or kerchief
in the act of living. And you say “fine,” yes, “fine thanks,”
[“fine” again and always “fine”] until the end of publication.
“How are you doing this fine morning?” “-Fine, how are you?”
the language plumbs the depths of idiocy
hoping you all and sundry will make “enjoy your day.”
The eye of judgment sits the Adam’s apple,
continues unrecorded in any document.
And you go home to swallow time
as if, on the first day, you’d swum the sea
to find on coral reef the last of judgment
with throat now free of all encumberment
since you had mastered the asphyxiation.


poem by Nathaniel Tarn

I saw the Farine Five Roses / in red

The Montreal Gazette does not usually share the same opinions as I do, but one of their editorial leaders for today - "Long Live Farine Five Roses!" - is right up my alley (or should I say narrow urban transit route?).

As the editorial writer says: "It's easy to dismiss the passing of industrial symbols as no great loss. They are neither great art nor great architecture. But they are humble monuments to the working world of thousands ... they deserve a place in our hearts, if not on our skyline."

The FARINE FIVE ROSES sign - a giant, neon-lit series of letters in red retro style - pictured here - has stood over the Bonaventure Expressway for 60 years and is in some ways as iconic for Montrealers as the HOLLYWOOD of LA; sadly, the company that owns and illuminates the sign has sold the trademark to another company, and so, to save money, and avoid advertising a competitor's brand, has switched off the power, rendering the great tall words dark in the night. As the Gazette suggests, Smuckers can still improve by re-lighting the historic sign.

The same sort of thing happened in Budapest, a visual-historical voiding, where the important, and retro-classic BUDAVOX sign was finally torn down. That sign was the title inspiration for my first collection (DC Books, 1999) - the sign can be seen on the cover. BUDAVOX was several stories high, and very beautiful, of its modernist period. Budapest closed many of its cinemas, or tore down a lot of its Deco and Modern neon signs at the turn of the millennium, to renew its city; such changes are often later profoundly regretted.

There are a few scenes in Miami Vice (one on the Argentina-Paraguay border) and again in Cuba, where Mann zooms in on, or features in the background, signs (one is a huge eye, the other the name of an Art Deco hotel) that herald the semiotic, ironic and iconic value of such signs, such letters. As the poet W.C. Williams, and the painter Charles Demuth, had it: "I saw the figure 5 / in gold" - one of the most beautiful phrases - and paintings - in 20th century modern art.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/na/ho_49.59.1.htm