ACROSS HAMPSTEAD HEATH: Keats' 200th anniversary

For the 200th anniversary of John Keats' death, I've unearthed a long-lost poem (of mine, not his) I committed way back when & prompted a little essay about the day I wrote it & more since then. I'll reprint the poem below, but if you want to know the story behind its writing in 1972, and about Keats' and my relationship, you can get the full package over at Medium. Use this friends link, and you'll get have access to it even if you don't subscribe to Medium. 

 

ACROSS HAMPSTEAD HEATH

He measured the room with a fury of pacing;

It shrunk, more confining, with each angry stride.

His eyes at the window through dim glass were tracing

The flight of a swallow, its leisurely glide.

But he felt no leisure; he was bound to his writing,

And each unfinished line made his solitude worse.

His muse was his torture, each thought fled him fighting

Against being committed to the prison of verse.

Just to be one with nature, footsteps drowning his cry

But the swallow had hidden, in some corner of sky.

Darkened clouds passed him quickly; the words came and went,

He failed to grasp them with his weakening eye,

And could not now write them; his pen gone bone dry.

Words flown away wasted; the energy spent.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7: THE VIEW FROM THE WEST WING

I've written a long essay on the new Aaron Sorkin film. A shorter version might appear elsewhere, but here's the synopsis: this is an entertaining movie. If you weren't 'there' at the time of the Chicago riots, or the trial of the Chicago 8, you will probably find it politically instructive too, given life on planet Trump. But if you were there, you will find that its version reflects less the tenor of the protest, the chaos of Chicago and the overall seriousness of the situation than Sorkin's need to find a hero and a conflict for him, and his inability to see the United States in anything less than glowing terms. Here's the link to find it at Medium, where you can read a certain number of stories before having to subscribe.

TALES FROM ISOLATION ROW

Because I have been working in the past couple of months to generate traffic on two other platforms, my American football content on my Patreon site, Friday Morning Tight End, and other writing on Medium, sometimes via the Arc Digital platform, I have neglected Irresistible Targets. This should not surprise you, since I have at least twice seriously considered simply abandoning this project, which I was hoping would attract a much larger regular readership than it has.

But the lockdown has left me with more time to use, and I thought it might be time to begin working my way through books and television series and films I have read and watched, made notes about and organised ideas, but not written because, frankly, there was no money in it. So for the immediate future, at least, I'm proposing to write as many brief pieces as I can, and publish them here under the rubric of reviews or tales from Isolation Row. We'll start with a rather excellent Maigret from February....

BREXIT: A MODEST PROPOSAL My suggestions via Arc Digital

I've written a piece for Arc Digital suggesting an easy way to make the current conundrum over Brexit something more bearable, entertaining and successful for all concerned. The piece was recommended to readers on Medium, in their World section, and they have provided a link by which you can read it and laugh without necessarily having to subscribe there, though that's not a bad idea. You can find that link here....happy reading