As everyone on the planet now knows, Titanic sank 100 years ago today, sadly resulting in the loss of hundreds of souls. Perhaps no cultural response to this modern tragedy is more brilliant (and less discussed, comparatively, these days, at least in comparison to film and television spectacles) than Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Convergence of the Twain'. The jarring of the two hemispheres, the human, and natural, is eerily fated by The Spinner of Years. In this blind, process-led world, things happen, but not with any compassion, as the Immanent Will just stirs a sort of sluggish, cruel soup of events. One of the bleakest poems ever written in English (it makes Larkin seem jolly), it nonetheless captures the curiously disturbing aspects of the disaster - of any event in fact - by mocking the usual positive aspects of a love or marriage poem. In this case, the consummation is to be greatly not desired. Yeats was clearly strongly influenced by this poem, when writing 'Leda and The Swan'.
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
Comments