Poetry & Pop Culture: An Interview with Todd Swift

ONE OF OUR FAVORITE blogs is the British project Eyewear. It was one of the first blogs to explore the intersection of poetry and popular culture, and it remains the best.  The founder, Todd Swift, is a particularly interesting guy.  Poet, professor, blogger, and cultural critic, Swift makes poetry available and accessible.  His blog posts on the The Best American Poetry Blog are always smart and funny.  So, we sat down, sort of, with Swift and asked him about Eyewear.

TWR: You started Eyewear 2005.  How has blogging changed for you since then?

SWIFT: I think blogging is dying out, as a mass fad, replaced by social networking, and other briefer fast-paced systems, like Tweeting or whatsit, but better blogs, that supply excellent content, are actually improving.

TWR: Along with Mike Chasar's site, yours is pretty much the only blog that looks at the intersection of poetry, politics, and popular culture.  How do you see these three forces intersecting at this point in history?

SWIFT: I wish there was more intersection.  Where is the poetry magazine like Entertainment Weekly, or Vanity Fair, showcasing the glamorous lives of poets?  Seriously, though, the ways that film and music now inspire poets as much as literature once did demands more engaged intertextual readings of our culture.  As for politics, that discourse has been shockingly cheapened of late in America, and to a degree, in the UK, by interventionist-media like Fox.

TWR: Though the feeble reach of The Weekly Rader extends across the pond, most of its readers tend to be bored Americans.  What's it like writing about poetry, politics, and popular culture in England? What would surprise American readers?

SWIFT: England is awash with pop culture, of course: fashion, pop and rock, movies, TV, radio.  What I find astonishing is that British people are really like their comedies, in a way that Americans aren't.  By this I mean, British people really do tend to have those accents, and drop highly ironic and acidic comments all the time.  Substance abuse, sex, and atheism are quite normal in the UK (what people aspire to, the celebrity life), so there is less piety than in American culture - only the Queen and the troops are sacred.  There is a resistance to sentiment, and also to sincere expression of emotionality, so the poetry, and TV, here, is far less filled with gestures of hope or transcendence.  Love poems are more likely to end with a gag than a rose.  Also surprising would be, I think, the high esteem American TV is held in, and the low esteem Americans themselves are, including most poets.

TWR: Who are some of your favorite British poets?  Who are some folks Americans may not know about?

Giles Goodland

SWIFT: Too many to really reel off.  The best experimental mid-career poet is  Giles Goodland.  The wittiest younger poets would include Luke Kennard, Joe Dunthorne, Emily Berry and Lorraine Mariner, whose styles are becoming hugely formative.  Keston Sutherland and Andrea Brady are the leading avant-garde poets from the Cambridge school.  Older excellent poets would include Anthony Thwaite (now 80), and Sheila Hillier.  But I have many favorites.

TWR: What's the strangest reaction you've received to one of your blog posts?

SWIFT: Some weirdo posted a comment about my anniversary, suggesting my wife was a closet lesbian and I was gay.  I mean, wonderful if true, but, since not - why go so far to attack?  I assume it was an attack.

TWR: I'm glad you never found out that was me. How close have you come to bagging-or is it sacking-the whole sodding blog project?  What keeps you going?

SWIFT: Every day I plan to quit.  Having over 240 followers, and tens of thousands of hits a months keep me going.  I feel obliged to do this.  No other blog over here so fearlessly takes on the vested interests. But it has its costs.

TWR: In what way do you wish the discourse of American poetry was more like that in Britain? And, in what way to you wish the discourse of British poetry was more like that in the Colonies?

SWIFT: I like how British poets all know each other. How they still like form,  and admire poets like Thomas Hardy.  How tone still matters, and very fine nuance.  I wish British poetry was more open to radical forms, and more shifting levels of diction and discourse, away from ordinary language and plain narrative.  There is a great fear of high language now in the UK, most mainstream poems are written in some version of middle-class or working class colloquial speech.

TWR: If Geoffrey Hill and John Ashbery got into a fistfight, who would win?

SWIFT: They're both on the same side - they both come out of late, high Forties modernism, via FT Prince and Terence Tiller.  They both understand intelligence and eloquence and surprise in poems.

TWR: What American writer would you most like to make a cross-country road trip with?

SWIFT: Nicole Blackman.  Read with her before. She is the coolest.  Least want to - Franzen.  He bores me silly.

TWR: What question do you wish I had asked? And, what would your answer have been?

SWIFT: My greatest desire in poetry.  To have a Selected stateside, in hardcover. And yes, I am an eyewear fetishist.

Can't Decide Who to Vote For? It's all about the Inaugural Poem

AT PRESENT, THE MOST ubiquitous conversation in America is about the next Democratic presidential nominee. Almost every story on TV, in the news, and in the blogosphere advances a compelling reason to support either Senator Clinton or Obama. But, amidst all of the rationalization and speculation, even the most seasoned pundits dance around what everyone knows is the real determining factor for who the next president should be--whose candidacy would yield the best inaugural poem?

The most convincing evidence that George W. Bush was going to be a bad president was his decision to discontinue the use of the inaugural poem. When John F. Kennedy invited Robert Frost to write a poem for his inaugural celebration, Frost gave him "The Gift Outright." Granted, the poem is a bit of a chauvinistic paean to the tenets of Manifest Destiny, but it has its moments. Beyond the poem itself, though, is the symbolism. It made a statement. Linking poetry to the ceremony of the most important job in the world sends the message that poetry (and poets) are important. When Bush passed on this tradition, he sent the unintentional message that imagination and verbal proficiency were of little importance to him, lo and behold, how accurate that was.

The best indicator of Bill Clinton's promise as a leader was when he announced he would resuscitate the inaugural poem. Even better, his choice was Maya Angelou, an African American woman who in almost every way, was the antithesis of Frost. Her contribution, the much heralded, "On the Pulse of Morning," was more inclusive, more celebratory than Frost's. It remains one of American Poetry's best moments.

And so it is that pundits from Tim Russert to Rush Limbaugh to Keith Olberman to Katie Couric to Markos Moulitsas have been secretly discussing who each candidate will select to read the next inaugural poem. Las Vegas oddsmakers refuse to release their betting lines. Rumors have it that Li-Young Li, Adrienne Rich, and W. S. Merwin are near the top of the list, but no one will confirm.

My own hunch is that both candidates have already selected their respective poets. I heard the names had been leaked to The Drudge Report, but even he knows not to go public with such explosive information. Until something final happens, The Weekly Rader is your best outlet for this story.

So, the question is, who will the candidates select? Hillary Clinton, a candidate who respects traditions and institutions, will likely go with a prominent, storied, and vetted poet. Rich and Merwin are both strong possibilities but perhaps too left leaning. A more conservative choice would be John Ashbery, the most distinguished living American poet, and the only one I know of to write a poem about Popeye and rutabagas. Clearly, it would be hard to go wrong there. Alice Notley would be a great choice, but she now lives in Paris, so that won’t do. If Clinton is set on selecting a woman, her best option would be either Jorie Graham or fellow New Yorker Sharon Olds, but I don’t see that happening. She will want a man to put people at ease, and she’ll want to interject some levity into her ceremony. She’ll also pick a New York poet. That means . . .
CLINTON PICKS: BILLY COLLINS

Beloved by writers, academics, and cultural critics, Obama is under far more pressure to pick a cool, visionary poet for his inauguration. If Clinton is under the gun to tap a woman for this honor, then Obama is certainly feeling the heat to return an African American poet to the dais. But Obama is often all about defying expectations, changing traditions, and charting his own course, so for him, it is harder to speculate who he’ll pick. Nikki Giovanni, who survived the shootings at Virginia Tech, comes to mind right away as does Yusef Komunyakaa, one of America’s best poets. However, the Senator’s advisors will likely talk him out of picking anyone whose name has even the most remote trace of sounding Muslim. Terrance Hayes would be a surprising but smart choice. He is a fantastically talented poet, and he would appeal to the younger generations. It is possible Obama will pick an Anglo poet to downplay race. If so, his smartest option would be the beloved Robert Pinsky. There is no doubt Pinksy would write a memorable poem. But I predict that Senator Obama will want to honor the cultural contribution of African Americans and appease women at the same time by selecting an incredibly talented former Poet Laureate.
OBAMA SELECTS: RITA DOVE

The Weekly Rader invites readers to leave their comments, suggestions, predictions, and nominees in the comments option below. Or, simply complete the poll in the right-hand column. I'll post the results here and on The Daily Kos.