New Selected Poems
A new selection of poems by the celebrated gay poet

Thom Gunn has been described as “one of the most singular and compelling poets in English during the past half-century” (Times Literary Supplement). Gunn was an Elizabethan poet in modern guise, though there’s nothing archaic, quaint, or sepia-toned about his poetry. His method was dispassionate and rigorous, uniquely well suited for making a poetic record of the tumultuous time in which he lived.

Gunn’s dozens of brilliantly realized poems about nature, friendship, literature, sexual love, and death are set against the ever-changing backdrop of San Francisco—the druggy, politically charged sixties and the plague years of AIDS in the eighties. Perhaps no contemporary poet was better equipped—by temperament, circumstance, or poetic gift—to engage the subjects of eros and thanatos than Thom Gunn.

This New Selected Poems, compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer and accompanied by insightful notes, is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn’s inimitable career.

1128329755
New Selected Poems
A new selection of poems by the celebrated gay poet

Thom Gunn has been described as “one of the most singular and compelling poets in English during the past half-century” (Times Literary Supplement). Gunn was an Elizabethan poet in modern guise, though there’s nothing archaic, quaint, or sepia-toned about his poetry. His method was dispassionate and rigorous, uniquely well suited for making a poetic record of the tumultuous time in which he lived.

Gunn’s dozens of brilliantly realized poems about nature, friendship, literature, sexual love, and death are set against the ever-changing backdrop of San Francisco—the druggy, politically charged sixties and the plague years of AIDS in the eighties. Perhaps no contemporary poet was better equipped—by temperament, circumstance, or poetic gift—to engage the subjects of eros and thanatos than Thom Gunn.

This New Selected Poems, compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer and accompanied by insightful notes, is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn’s inimitable career.

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New Selected Poems

New Selected Poems

New Selected Poems

New Selected Poems

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Overview

A new selection of poems by the celebrated gay poet

Thom Gunn has been described as “one of the most singular and compelling poets in English during the past half-century” (Times Literary Supplement). Gunn was an Elizabethan poet in modern guise, though there’s nothing archaic, quaint, or sepia-toned about his poetry. His method was dispassionate and rigorous, uniquely well suited for making a poetic record of the tumultuous time in which he lived.

Gunn’s dozens of brilliantly realized poems about nature, friendship, literature, sexual love, and death are set against the ever-changing backdrop of San Francisco—the druggy, politically charged sixties and the plague years of AIDS in the eighties. Perhaps no contemporary poet was better equipped—by temperament, circumstance, or poetic gift—to engage the subjects of eros and thanatos than Thom Gunn.

This New Selected Poems, compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer and accompanied by insightful notes, is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn’s inimitable career.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780374538699
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: 12/03/2019
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 525,979
Product dimensions: 4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) was educated at Cambridge University and had his first collection of poems, Fighting Terms, published while still an undergraduate. He moved to northern California in 1954 and taught in American universities until his death. His last collection was Boss Cupid (FSG, 2000).

Clive Wilmer is a poet and translator. He lives in Cambridge, England.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and References

Introduction

from FIGHTING TERMS (1954)

The Wound

Carnal Knowledge

Lerici

Tamer and Hawk

Incident on a Journey

from THE SENSE OF MOVEMENT (1957)

On the Move

At the Back of the North Wind

Autumn Chapter in a Novel

The Silver Age

Elvis Presley

The Allegory of the Wolf Boy

Jesus and his Mother

To Yvor Winters, 1955

Vox Humana

from MY SAD CAPTAINS (1961)

In Santa Maria del Popolo

Innocence

Modes of Pleasure (‘New face, strange face, for my unrest’)

The Byrnies

Claus von Stauffenberg

Flying Above California

Considering the Snail

The Feel of Hands

My Sad Captains

UNCOLLECTED (1960s)

From an Asian Tent

from POSITIVES (1965)

The Old Woman

from TOUCH (1967)

The Goddess

Touch Misanthropos

The Last Man

Memoirs of the World

Elegy on the Dust

The First Man

Pierce Street

from MOLY (1971)

Rites of Passage

Moly

For Signs

Three

From the Wave

Street Song

Grasses

The Discovery of the Pacific

Sunlight

from JACK STRAW'S CASTLE (1976)

Diagrams

Iron Landscapes (and the Statue of Liberty)

Last Days at Teddington

Jack Straw’s Castle

An Amorous Debate

Autobiography

Yoko

from THE PASSAGES OF JOY (1982)

Expression

Sweet Things

June

San Francisco Streets

Transients and Residents

Falstaff

Crystal

Crosswords

Interruption

Talbot Road

Night Taxi

from THE MAN WITH NIGHT SWEATS (1992)

The Hug

The Differences

Skateboard

To Isherwood Dying

The Stealer

Nasturtium

The Man with Night Sweats

Lament

Terminal

Her Pet

The J Car

The Missing

from BOSS CUPID (2000)

Duncan

My Mother’s Pride

The Gas-poker

To Donald Davie in Heaven

The Artist as an Old Man

A Wood near Athens

Dancing David

God

Bathsheba

Abishag

Notes

Index of Titles and First Lines

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