The latest influenza figures for Britain are to be released today - and it is expected they will indicate a surge in serious illness and deaths related to the H1N1 virus, currently the primary 'flu circulating, at epidemic proportions in the UK. Vaccines are low. Healthy younger people under 65 are most-affected. Will this be the crisis feared and predicted in 2009, or will it peak with relatively few fatalities? It seems odd not to keep schools closed a week or two, to let the seasonal virus settle.
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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As you know TS, a poet has to earn a living, and one of my roles with my current employer was working on the Swine-Flu Help-line back in Summer 2009. The problem now, as then, is that the mere mention of Swine-Flu seems to turn people hysterical, like some Middle-Ages Plague. I can't say too much about the work we did on the Help-line due to the confidential nature of the role, but it would not at all surprise me if the Swine-Flu virus does emerge again as a headline grabber in a generally slow time for news.