The Guardian today calls for Gordon Brown - that hapless Scot - to go. I wish he would. It seems that voting for Labour is currently a bad idea - if only because of Iraq; the failure to address the poverty divide; and due to current incompetence and cowardice. The Tories are worse - anti-EU (and aligned with fanatical homophobes in Europe) and still too Thatcherite for our own good. The Greens are angelic in the abstract, but too left of the centre to be a valid mainstream option - for now. Therefore, it seems the Lib Dems have a window of credibility we need to open for them. I don't much like atheistic babe-magnet Clegg, but Vince Cable is a great leader-in-waiting. If I were to vote tomorrow, it would be for the Lib Dems, then.
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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