Is anyone else getting fed up with this new Coalition? Yes. Unrest is brewing. The daily announcements of ever-more-brutal cuts more extreme than anything Thatcher tried - trying to downsize the State to below 40% - are becoming startling in their doomsday black comedy - the latest plan is to sell of England's natural reserves - its forests and waterways - to private companies to look after. Cameron speaks with a forked tongue - yesterday he suggested that tourism was the future - today his government seems to be dooming the UK's leading tourist charms - its natural beauty spots - to second-rate husbandry, or worse. This government will be a disaster, and we have to wait until 2015 to toss it out.
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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