Gurkha Moment

I grew up with tales from my father of the fierce, brave, loyal fighting men known as the Gurkhas - some of the greatest combatants of the 20th century. Their case has just been won, in Britain, to allow them to settle and live here, should they so wish. Justice has been well served. Had the Gurkhas been denied this right, imagine the stiff dishonour meted out to savagely loyal and nobly sacrificing soldiers.

Capital, Capitol, Thanatos

In one of the oddest, and most potentially self-destructive moves ever in democratic history, lawmakers and politicians in America have voted down the package to save the American economy, even though Obama and McCain, broadly, supported it. I am speechless, not a normal Eyewear thing to be. I suppose this was to save their skins (average folk were mightily agin it). Where does this leave the presidential candidates, and, more vitally, the capitalist economy? By calling such a massive bluff, will these elected mavericks herald the end of the banking system, or prove that the death-knell was less close than argued. This is a weird moment.

Paul Newman Has Died

Sad news. Great American actor Paul Newman has died. His major films include Exodus, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. His period of greatest achievement in film was no doubt the fifteen years between 1958 and 1973, when he was Brick in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and Henry Gondorff in The Sting. During this time he was arguably the greatest male star, and the most desired. He was beautiful and magnificent in The Hustler, and Hud. He had something of an Indian summer in the 1980s, with The Colour of Money, and the haunting The Verdict. Newman was a leaner, subtler, and perhaps more intelligent method actor, in the Brando style - and almost as big a sex symbol. His death leaves few actors of that era, and that fame and talent, alive - one thinks of, perhaps, Robert Redford, or Warren Beatty, as contemporaries, or near-equals - but neither quite had the acting chops, the gravitas, of Newman. He will be greatly missed, and is immortal on the screen.

Flatlined?

A very good review here at Lemon Hound of a fascinating new kind of innovative inscriptive writing - that borders on drawing in its use of line, and avoidance of alphabetic text. Poetry was always thought closest to music by some. Maybe now, closer to architecture, engineering, or design?

Poem by Sarah Law

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Sarah Law (pictured) this Friday.

Dr. Law is a senior lecturer in creative writing at London Metropolitan University, and an associate lecturer in creative writing for the Open University. She writes both lyrical and more experimental poetry.

Bliss Tangle was published by Stride in 1999, and The Lady Chapel in 2004, also by Stride. Her latest collection is Perihelion (Shearsman, 2006). A long poem is forthcoming in the anthology Manifesto from Salt, and she is working on a fourth collection.

Law regularly contributes reviews for Orbis and Stride Magazines. She also researches issues of gender and spirituality: a chapter on medieval mystic Julian of Norwich is appearing in a forthcoming volume Julian of Norwich's Legacy from Palgrave Macmillan.


exhibition

these days, we hold hands
and go for daring themes:
the secretum was once prohibited:
impossible, or wrong,

its early japanese erotica;
an implosion of sketched smiles,
eyes bright as curves of song

as we once looked, through glass
at Leonardo's then untried inventions,
your breath on my reflection.

poem by Sarah Law

Weird Scenes Inside The Bank Vault

Truly, these are historic, and strange days, indeed. Last night, Presisdent Bush appeared to speak to the "American people" - his microphone slightly muffled - and warned that the markets were no longer working correctly and needed to be fixed by massive government intervention; coming from a right-wing Republican, that's like Seamus Heaney asking Ron Silliman to edit his next poetry collection. Pretty unlikely, dude.

So, back in England, respected Churchmen have decided to take a page from The Cantos, and bee-in-bonnet Ezra, and start suggesting money trading is very dodgy - except, not really from Ezra's perspective at all, but rather, early Auden's. Marx has not been in such an ascendancy since the days of MacSpaunday.

Eyewear has long argued that a fusion of Marxism and Christianity (often known as Liberation Theology) was the best ethical position to adopt in a world of inequality, especially as it grounds Christ's teaching on a horizon of human need. Therefore, I am glad to see Rowan Williams wading in to these waters, at this time. However, established churches, who do use the capitalist system for their own purposes, should not cast the first stone, unless their vestments, as well as investments, are lily white.

Transparency

One of the differences between North American and British life, I think, is transparency. British society, older, and more traditional in many ways, still appears to often move forward through a series of nods and silent gestures - the patronage system that, in a monarchy, still means there are citizens knighted each year; much use of power, in the UK, is either rendered invisible, or less visible, than in, say, America - where, despite its many problems - one can currently see leading political figures openly debating the future of the US economy, and its failings - and problems with, for example, the Iraq war.

Yesterday's speech by Gordon Brown, for all its dullness with a human face approach, never broached the wars that Britain is fighting. Much gets dusted under the rug. Of course, Noam Chomsky is despised by mainstream America for seeking to delve deeper into the power structures of US finance and government - the entire West is based on smoke and mirrors (capitalism's trick of naturalising itself, as if competition was truly just what we are, what we do). Discussions of poetry, and poetics, in the UK, are often curiously distanced from the nitty-gritty: who publishes who, and why, and where - and who judges who, for what prize, and why - or even, how is a poem made, and why that way, and not another? I often strike some British poets as uncouth, as if it was wrong to actually question why, for instance, everyone (well, almost everyone) seems to think A is a brilliant poet, and master craftsman - or why B is still a minority taste in England. These questions are never personal - they are, in one sense, political - they seek to comprehend a system of judgements, that, with few engaged interlocutors, continues, mostly unchecked, and untested, by brunt of force - the force of those with the strongest will, and often, the best publishing jobs.

I was once told by a very good, serious, young avant-garde poet that no one can change the poetry system, all one can do is write good poems. However, that begs two questions: what is a good poem, and why can't one change the poetry system? Is it natural? Is it so entrenched, that it will last for a thousand years? In fact, the current poetry consensus is fragmenting, thanks to the rise of smaller innovative presses, like Salt, Eggbox, tall-lighthouse, and so on - and the emergence of dozens of young poets, often without vested interests (though many do seem linked to Roddy Lumsden, one of the most influential, engaged mentors that British poetry has ever had).

There do seem to be limits to who can rise, and how fast. I sometimes watch meteoric careers, with wonder. If anointed, will be protected, then boosted. This is fine, but it isn't about poetry - it's about the politics of the playground, and we all know it. Know it, but dare not speak out. It's not British to complain. However, the silence means that certain figures have amassed extraordinary influence, over the publishing, promotion, and reviewing, of poetry in the UK. This power has nothing, and everything, to do with poetry. TS Eliot blocked the publication of Wallace Stevens in the UK for some time - and that decision had a direct impact on the reception of the wonderful, sublime poetics that we now think of as Stevensian, within British poetry. That's just one example. There are many. Poetry editors, in the UK, exert immense power, and determine, more or less, what the mainstream thinks of as poetry.

I am not against influence - or even stewardship of an art form by leading practitioners. I would like to see more open discussion of the ways that poetry, publishing, and poetics, intermingle in Britain. Why does editor X think poet Y deserves to have a book, or prize, and not Z? Too often, the reason is, we are told, because the poet in question is "the real thing", or some other such fuzzy meaningless evaluation. British poetry seems to have moved away from clarity of judgement, such as was espoused by I.A. Richards. Poets rarely know on what grounds they are to be judged.

Why, for example, was Sean O'Brien's collection judged better than Edwin Morgan's? Not, as some think, sneeringly, for personal reasons. But, I think likely, due to poetics. Morgan's diverse, heterogeneity of style is more international than O'Brien's formal voice grounded in place. It's seen as "better" by many poets and critics here. This isn't just about language, or politics - it is, but not just - it's about laying cards out on the table: what's good poetry, and what isn't, and why.

I'd like to see a reasoned defense for the superiority of a fixed and constant voice, over a fluctuating verbal style (Heaney vs. Koch, for instance). What are the prejudices on which poetic preferences are based? Ironically, in the UK, the turn against elitism, and the rise of a literate working class (after 1945), saw poets like Amis, then Harrison, and now Paterson, avoid the pitfalls of so-called flamboyance, and rhetoric, in favour of a voiced but nuanced everyman-as-craftsman approach - the well-made lyric poem of experience and utterance; ironic, because this has become the new elite style. The old elite, academic, opaque, difficult, clever, educated - is now marginalised, and seen as "postmodern" and somehow unBritish (in some quarters). Whole styles have been shrugged off.

Morgan is a genius, who, in America, might be heralded as a major figure; here, he is lauded, but somewhat evaded. There is an anxiety in Britain about being too smart, too slick, too "American" - which is why Brown's presidential trick of bringing his wife out to introduce him yesterday was startling, and, though finally triumphant, momentarily embarrassing.

Eyewear is thinking of running a poll, to discover who its readers think are the most influential trend-setters, and style-makers, the true movers and shakers, in contemporary British poetry. If you can see something, then you can see for yourself. Feel free to suggest who should be included in the poll.