December is the ceiling of the year - the end of the 12-month cycle - and, given the current weather clogging and blanketing Britain, no doubt a nuisance and misery to many. But it is also the best of months. Though many no doubt prefer June, that central cauldron of possibility, December offers license of a darker sort - or rather, encourages illumination in a dark time. For those who seek spiritual succour, December is the seat of many religious festivals and occasions for celebration. For those of a merrier disposition, jolly options are on the calendar. Indeed, the festive opportunities begin early, and include gifting, eating, drinking, and general carousing, as well as carolling and kissing under bits of shrubbery. Some of this has been commercialised, but we are in the grip of light in December, the grip of a slight madness, an infectious jocularity that, sped by tunes and jingles and festooned trees, gives us the chance to overlook the year that's been, with its travails, and not yet begin to endure the winter and year before us. So, a ceiling, but also, a liminal moment, and, in some ways, a hinge - the door from one year to the next - and this makes it a magical portal - for only in December can you step across time in such a manner, as if from one Everest to another.
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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