Also in The Sunday Times - news of a mass email and social networking campaign to arrange a vote of the members of the Poetry Society. Everyone has agreed not to talk to the media, including Dr Fiona Sampson (this year's Ruth Padel, according to the catty Times). Sadly, British media only like it when poets are fighting like wrestlers in mud. Eyewear is maintaining neutrality in this apparent power struggle, because frankly, Mr. Shankly, what is it about? No one has publicly said what direction Sampson wants to go in that the outgoing president didn't. I liked the editing of Poetry Review, so saw little problem there, though some of those Paterson essays were a bit tough to follow.
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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