I have been a member of a gym for about a year now, and see a personal trainer from time to time. I run, swim, lift weights, and stretch, three to four times a week. And, due to genes, a love of food, and some medicine I need to take, I am still about ten kilos over the suggested weight for a man my age (46). Then again, having neither won nor lost Lee Child's lottery of life (I am exactly medium height, at 5-9, neither short nor tall), and being a middle-aged man, most of the excess baggage appears around my midriff. This has got me so down it was beginning to look up to me, and then the other day - zap! - I had a thought. Who hates me this way, other than me? I am loved by wife, and friends. More vitally, some of the best guys ever, guys I loved, were love-handled or even fat - Orson Welles, Dylan Thomas, and Babe Ruth spring to mind. Wallace Stevens, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Diego Rivera - all had a bad BMI. If being a chubby hubby was okay for them, why not me? I feel reborn. I will still exercise, I will still try to control my poor nutrition, but I will also try to enjoy looking like a southern hick cop chewing a toothpick, hoisting his belt, letting his manly flesh roll over, as it does, as it can and should.
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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