It is fitting that the obituary of Chris Haney, a Canadian inventor of the world's greatest board game since Monopoly and Scrabble - Trivial Pursuit - has been published on Canada Day, in the Guardian. Haney helped to invent the game in my home town of Montreal, when a journalist at The Gazette. As a paperboy I used to deliver The Gazette, and still recall that most memorable of headlines, first glimpsed groggily at the crack of dawn some summer day thirty years ago: BOY MEETS HERO AT BOTTOM OF POOL. No Canadian cottage or dinner party was complete without TP - which for awhile, with its pie pieces - seemed to be more popular than TV. I had an Uncle, Ed, who memorised all the cards, and therefore could win the game on his first round, which was annoying. He has since died, tragically.
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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