I am sad to read in today's Guardian that Alice Miller has died. Miller was the author of books that explored and explained the traumas of childhood and children, in ways that took their side against "toxic" parents. As a poet whose early work explored child abuse, and the traumas of infancy and youth - and as a person who was in psychoanalysis for seven years in my twenties - I can only say that Miller's influential quarrel with Freud was significant. However, some of her claims and extreme positions were themselves traumatic. It will be important to sort out her legacy, now that she is gone.
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
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As someone who works with challenging/vulnerable young people, I have used her theory of the 'enlightened witness' as my guiding principle for years.
Ron Moule