The recent disaster in The Philippines - which may be the result of man made global climate change on some deeper level - is also a nail in the coffin of an interventionist God. My Catholic theology has wavered, and it now is blown over by yet another assault on my sensibilities. No God I know would massacre thousands in a windstorm. But then, I do not know God. I can only know what he is not, so feeble is my human ken. At any rate, the universe moves in remote, strange and often cruel ways. All we can do as mortals is try to pick up the pieces when nature, in its broad brutal swathes of dumb action negates us. We must gesture towards what a kind presence overbearing all would do. We must try to be God in the curious absence of one. Those poor people!
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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