Annie Finch has blogged at the Poetry Foundation site about her visit to Britain, and makes some intriguing and relevant comparisons between American and British poetic culture (as she observed it). In the post, she calls my Oxfam series event (for which she read) the single-best organised bookshop poetry event she has ever been at. I'm chuffed. I've been organising and compering (hosting) poetry events and cabarets for 25 years now (started when I was 18) and always believed that poetry emceeing was an art form (however minor). Since 2004, I've tried to make the Oxfam events at 91 Marylebone High Street as good as any reading can be. Nice to have a poet say so.
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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