The sale the other day of Action Comics #1 for a million dollars is both bound to raise a smile and a question. First, the nostalgia - my Dad once reputedly owned this comic, and sold it used for a nickel on St. Catherine Street, Montreal, when he was a little boy. Subsequently his mother threw out many other classic comics of the era, as he grew up. That's why these comics are so rare nowadays - spring cleaning and dog-eared over reading. That's the fun part. While I loved comics, and still do - and therefore am glad they are valued and collected - I wonder how many poetry books from 1938 are being bought and sold for a million in cold hard cash. Not many. I wonder, Eyewear fans - what book would you buy, if you could afford it, for such a mighty sum?
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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