Happy St. Patrick's Day! While in Ireland over the weekend, I picked up an anthology edited by a colleague of mine, the poet and short story writer Paul Perry. His Best of Irish Poetry 2009 is well worth the Amazon order it may take to wing it across some wide water. Poets selected include Heaney, Muldoon, Higgins, Flynn, Boran, Groarke, Laird, Longley, McGuckian, Mahon, O'Donoghue - in fact, most of the best of the living Irish poets.
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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