Sipping Coke and playing games... words from David Sylvian's exquisite song "September". The burnished month of mellow sunlight, fading like sepia, from summer into autumn, has arrived, full of pencils for school, sharp and yellow, and tinged with sadness, tinged with a remembrance of those July kisses, those August goodbyes. With September comes responsibility, but, like a first date with winter, the serious business of dark night is yet to come, there is still a dalliance on the sun's doorstep, a last tilt at youth.
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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