What's a blog for, if not to sometimes toot one's own horn - and all the better when the links also lead to much other excellent writing. My poems appear at the recently online Blackbox Manifold 4, in good company, with work also there by (among others) Charles Bernstein, Sean O'Brien, John Tranter and Medbh McGuckian; several of the poets share an exploration of high rhetoric and poetic excess, which is good to see. And, a new poem is happily up at Hand + Star.
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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