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
POETRY, POLITICS, PROVOCATION AND POPULAR CULTURE SINCE 2005 - 19 YEARS AND over 7 million visits - British Library-archived
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Let's raise our stanzas in rebellion against the mainstream narrative, that says over and over again, that we are "isolated egos competing for the most of what each of us wants" (quote attributed to the author of 'Science and the Moral Life' published in 1949) and therefore our only option is to go out and conquer as much of the world's resources as we want.