Today we have been reminded of the outlaw nature of the sea - as one country defends its blockade with violence, and another threatens a criminal investigation into a massive corporation that has catastrophically failed to live up to its promises. The high seas, below and above, remain wild places, the home of piracy, rapine behavior and wanton criminality - indeed, their lawlessness reminds us of what humans get up to, when unfettered by laws, or held back by virtue. What is perhaps more unsettling is to consider how matters are not much better, once, apparently evolved, we crawl onto the land. For on land, where governance, and laws, obtain, companies and governments have managed to incorporate a web of so-called laws, agreements, decrees, principles, doctrines, ad infinitum - that add up to what, precisely? - money and power dominate; the weak are unprotected; and the voiceless, human or animal or plant, at the mercy of barely-veiled thuggery. As humans, we may talk a good game, but we know our pensions ride on the profits of BP, and that our allies buy and sell weapons that we make for them so that the economy - that hateful excuse for every sin under the sun - can "recover". One wants to say clean up the mess. Where to begin? We have leagues to go before we sleep.
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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