Is there anything better than sun? Not the sun, mind, but sun, singular. Sun. As in getting, taking, catching. Today was sunny in London. Fully and completely sunny. 22 Celsius. That is almost miraculous - a barbecue Spring moment of extreme grace. I sat out in both the back and front of my flat, following sun. I read some Hazlitt, on Familiar Style, the new Adrienne Rich, some Jessie L. Weston (she has a marvellous style!), and ended with some April poems from David Lehman's delightful The Evening Sun. I also read some newspapers, and other books, one on rhetoric, but leave that for another day. I sometimes wore my UEA ballcap - but mostly I am red-faced for the seeking of the very highest good: sun.
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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