Alan Baban - poet, writer, medical student - was at the Modern Canadian Poets launch last night wearing the best geek chic eyewear I've seen lately, and after we went out for some talk and dinner (I don't eat before events) the subject of the year's best music came up - Alan is a music critic for cokemachineglow, and we're lucky to have his comments at Eyewear, too. Anyway, he's heard a review copy of what is apparently going to be the kick-ass album of 2010 - Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The reviews so far have been ecstatic - as if this was Pet Sounds-Thriller-Okay Computer as second coming. Let's hope so. If it is, it will confirm my suspicion that this has been the best year for popular music, ever. The new effects that can be achieved in production, combined with the new immediacy of transmission, have led to the scene breaking open in so many ways, sounds, and styles, that the cornucopia has become narcotically, insanely enveloping.
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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The best CD I've bought this year was Eliza Doolittle. She is like Lilly Allen, only better.
My wife hates it but I love it!
Best wishes from Simon