Thom Gunn

Today we belatedly note the birth date of Thom Gunn (August 29, 1929 – April 25, 2004), English poet praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, after moving towards a looser, free-verse style. Winning major literary awards; his best poems were said to have a compact philosophical elegance.

Here are three of his poems for your consideration:

High Fidelity

I play your furies back to me at night,
The needle dances in the grooves they made,
For fury is passion like love, and fury's bite,
These grooves, no sooner than a love mark fade;

Then all swings round to nightmare: from the rim,
To prove the guilt I don't admit by day,
I duck love as a witch to sink or swim
Till in the ringed and level I survey
The tuneless circles that succeed a voice.
They run, without distinction, passion, rage,
Around a soloist's merely printed name
That still turns, from the impetus not choice,
Surrounded in that played-out pose of age
By notes he was, but cannot be again.

— Thom Gunn