Shameless plug time. My latest collection, Winter Tennis, was not published in the UK, and was thus not up for the Eliot Prize. Nor is it likely to be reviewed much, or at all, in Britain, though I live and work here. One of the challenges of being a Canadian poet in London. Anyway, Alberta is the new next big thing, and, fortunately, someone has noticed the book there. This is, as far as I can tell, the first and only review of WT, so far. Maurice Mierau writes that "Winter Tennis is an elegantly crafted book, and Swift is tuned in to the English language as a global inheritance in a way that more Canadian poets should be."
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