The tragic news, despite what we had been told to expect, is that Amy Winehouse was not "clean" when she died. Instead, as the coroner told us, she was five times over the legal limit, three days into a vodka binge. According to her GP, who visited her soon before she died at home, she was "tipsy" but still lucid, and talking of her future. Alcohol changed that situation quickly enough. It's a killer, and always has been - and needs to be licensed and consumed with more care than the UK drinks industry allows. One day, the scandal of our age will be the way in which tobacco and booze were sold over the counter to us, wasting the billions that could bail out the NHS. I saw my maternal uncle, Edward, drink himself to death - much like Winehouse, one night he went across the street, and bought a bottle from the shop that had promised us never to sell him any liquor - went home, and drank it, dying in bed a few hours later. Like Winehouse, he was brilliant, and sensitive, and funny, and kind - but also like her, he had a disease.
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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