The news that smoking has been banned in the cafes of Berlin and Paris (even if the laws will not be strictly enforced for months to come) is as good as it is unlikely. I, myself, was once a smoker, and spent several years in Paris, reading, writing, and daydreaming in my local cafe (Le Nemrod) accompanied by the plumes of tobacco that are the silky blue angels of seedy leisure and lazy desire. Cigarette smoke was once the airborne cinematic dada of the 20th century, as modern as death, chaos and machines in tandem. But, as we know from Mann's stylish The Insider, it is possible to have a mise-en-scene contra the cancer-giver extraordinaire. Smoking kills people, and is addictive (so is life, sneer cynics). Other cynics carp about the "nanny state" - as if laws against speeding, or putting rat poison in sandwiches, were also horrifying intrusions into the personal sphere. Art, and cosmopolitan, even bohemian, locations, should survive the cafe culture meeting the cult of health. So long as there is coffee, conversation, and newspapers, and passers-by to ogle or compare, cafes can, and will, thrive.
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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