David Cameron, British PM, has been over there in the US of A this week, bigging down his role as a junior partner. Not a history boy, Cameron yesterday talked about, on TV no less, how Britain was even junior partner in fighting the Nazis in 1940. Well, maybe to the Russians, but not the Yanks. As every schoolchild knows, or once did, the Americans only entered in 1941, after Pearl Harbour. Instead, the 1940 war period was Britain's "finest hour". I wonder, will Cameron also acknowledge that WH Auden is really American, and thank the States for loaning "us" Eliot? Indeed, is British poetry, postwar, junior partner to the American stream?
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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