Thom Gunn

Today we note the birth date of Thom Gunn (August 29, 1929 – April 25, 2004), English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, free verse style.

Gunn's poetry, together with that of Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, and other members of The Movement, has been described as "...emphasizing purity of diction and a neutral tone...encouraging a more spare language and a desire to represent a seeing of the world with fresh eyes."

Gunn left England with his partner, Michael Kitay, who he met at Cambridge, and moved to California to study poetry with Yvor Winters. He spent the rest of his life in San Francisco with Kitay. Gradually, he began reading the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Gary Snyder, and Robert Duncan, influences that would shape his poetry. Neither British nor American, Gunn resolutely evaded easy classification throughout his career as a poet.

Gunn’s early collections of poetry include The Sense of Movement (1957) and My Sad Captains (1961), a book divided into halves. The first half included poems written in the heroic verse of his first two books, and the second began to experiment with syllabic verse. Books such as Touch (1967), Moly (1971), Jack Straw’s Castle (1976), and The Passages of Joy (1982) show Gunn’s fusion of modern and traditional elements.

When the 1980s brought the AIDS epidemic to the gay community, Gunn lost many of his friends to the disease. His grief was, according to many critics, profoundly described in The Man with Night Sweats (1992).

The Man with Night Sweats

I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat  
Wake to their residue,   
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.   

My flesh was its own shield:   
Where it was gashed, it healed.

I grew as I explored   
The body I could trust   
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,

A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,   
My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed,   
But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am   
Hugging my body to me   
As if to shield it from   
The pains that will go through me,

As if hands were enough   
To hold an avalanche off.

--Thom Gunn