Tom Paulin was on the Andrew Marr Start The Week radio show this morning, on the BBC, talking about his new Faber book. Asked by the intrepid Marr of the state of poetry, especially with regards to the digital age and the Internet, what did he do? Paulin didn't talk about blogs, or e-books, or web sites, or the way the Internet is the key to getting more poems to more young readers, etc. - no, instead, he talked about how the net is a great search tool for discovering the roots of old words, like rood. Indeed, the net is a very powerful series of search engines, and this quirky answer is most intriguing, and ambiguous as hell. But a bit of a missed opportunity, maybe, too.
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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