Skip to main content

Todd Swift Is 40

Readers of Eyewear have commented on the transition from the original name of this blog, to the new one.

I offer this image as one possible clue to the shift in title.

Orson Welles, one of my heroes, knew the shock value in modernism's willingness to project the artist's project.

However, his brand of modernism's constant willingness to put himself, and his auteur status, front and centre, remains a dramatic challenge to his radical other, T.S. Eliot, the objective impersonal author (supposedly) - the only other American of the age equal to him in terms of genius-as-cultural-influence - and remains a radical challenge to post-structuralism's death-of-author.

As film-maker and magician, Welles knew that some hand had to hide, and guide, the forces behind the camera eye - it might as well be his, or said to be so.

So it is, I have always loved the moment, in one of his creations, when he intones the thrilling words - I am Orson Welles, and I directed this picture - or some such statement. To me, Welles is the father of the blog, and its very power, which is to make each one of us an auteur, unafraid to say so, and to come out of the dark, like mercury flashing, and present our selves, as images, ideas, theatre of the mind.

I turn 40 today.

Comments

Adam Fieled said…
Never forget, Todd, that de Kooning didn't have his first major show until he was 44-- the same age that Stevens put out his first book. You've already got three.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".