Sad news. Maxine Cooper (pictured) has died. She starred in one of the major 50s noirs, and an Eyewear favourite, Kiss Me Deadly, the anti-atomic hardboiled flick with the erotic sucker punch. She was also basically blacklisted for being an activist and too smart for her own good. Hollywood doesn't know where to put women's minds, sadly. I hear the new Jane Campion film about Keats may win at Cannes this year, by the way. Campion is one of only several female directors in a tediously male game. Time to break the glass ceiling for the silver screen.
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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