Two new pamphlets from the indefatigable Alistair Noon, based in Berlin! In People's Park, from Penumbra editions, is only £4.00 and is beautifully put together, both as a physical object, and a series of texts. This is excellent poetry. Someone should give Mr. Noon a full collection soon - Salt? I love the last line: "Around the toppled reptiles ran the gnawing rats". He has also translated Sixteen Poems by Monika Rinck, from Barque. "Absolute romantic zero" indeed! Excellent writing from a German into English. These are both stocking stuffers for the poetry buff in your linguistically-innovative home.
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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