Ten years ago, as the UK prepared for a potentially illegal war against Iraq, Nthposition, edited by Val Stevenson, and myself, the site's poetry editor, hurriedly compiled a global anti-war anthology that was soon followed by many others. The anthology, ten years later, has been written about in several academic studies, sometimes vilified, and was even mocked by the comedian S. Fry. It was also downloaded tens of thousands of times, launched in dozens of cities at once, from Russia to Japan to America to the UK - and was turned into a very rapid book by Salt (when it was featured on CNN). The Guardian that year selected it as the most popular poetry book of the year, in terms of library loans. It was called 100 Poets Against The War. That's what I did, way back then, when younger, with my spare time; it is now available online for sale for one penny.
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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