Irish poet-critic David Wheatley has written well and long on the Letters of Louis MacNeice - long a key link between the poetries of the Auden England and the later Muldoon Ireland - his influence as talky-yet-lyrical common man of the time with a wounded heart and a stained sleeve has made him a dour-if-erotic Anglo-Irish version of Frank O'Hara (his journals and letters ways of doing this and that with poems, instead of journalism); and he connects so many strands and styles, not least the pre and post war ones, that he can't be left out of anyone's core anthology of the last century; and a few of his lyrics are as good as anyone else's. It is good to hear he wrote well and long himself, in the letter form.
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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God, that's faint praise if ever I heard any! Personally I think MacNeice has worn better than Auden in many ways. The older I get, the more he grows on me; his technical skill, his ability to lose self in something wider, his subtle musicality.