Fighting Terms

by Thom Gunn

Covers shelf rubbed. Foxing to edges & interior.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Thom Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004), born Thomson William Gunn, was an Anglo-American 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 toward a looser, free-verse style. After relocating from England to San Francisco, Gunn wrote about gay-related topics—particularly in his most famous work, The Man With Night Sweats in 1992—as well as drug use, sex, and his bohemian lifestyle. He won major literary awards.

Reviews

[James Askari · Rating 3 out of 5]

The early Gunn is a poet of male stylings--some jaunty, some seeming to compensate for an insecurity or lack. He was young and gay at a time in the mid-50s when it was still illegal; his sex-war poem, 'Carnal Knowledge', about being 'flaccid' in bed can be taken just as a veiled avowal of homosexuality, though his admission that 'even in bed I pose' and anatomy of the attitudinising of both the male and female partners may have a pertinence beyond a history of 'passing'. At least three love-poems work through a metaphor of the 'refugee' or incoming army seeking possession of the land. Another metaphorical cluster is provided by the politics and culture of the Elizabethan court. Gunn's persona is trying to win the favour of 'Southampton', the patron and beautiful man, while other courtiers belittle and plot against him. In a poem like 'The Beach Head', these elements combine.

Gunn exercises his muscularity in straining his thoughts to fit closely-observed stanzas, typically in four and five lines with no more than two rhymes. He writes in an iambic pentameter that both makes its points punchily and has been disciplined--bullied, even--to squeeze into its corset. Gunn's bluffness is tough but can go beautifully tender, as in 'Tamer and Hawk', a poem that imagines the mutual subjection of love in these terms: 'I thought I was so tough,/but gentled at your hands/Cannot be quick enough/to fly for you and show/That when I go I go/At your commands'. Though he can attain epigrammatic force, it's more often the case that self-disclosure emerges in obscurity or in abstractions swinging off any immediate reference: 'Why did my contradictory mind keep warning/That loss of dignity lay at his side?'

[Wuttipol✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tamer and Hawk

I thought I was so tough,
But gentled at your hands,
Cannot be quick enough
To fly for you and show
That when I go I go
At your commands.

Even in flight above
I am no longer free:
You seeled me with your love,
I am blind to other birds—
The habit of your words
Has hooded me.

As formerly, I wheel
I hover and I twist,
But only want the feel,
In my possessive thought,
Of catcher and of caught
Upon your wrist.

You but half civilize,
Taming me in this way.
Through having only eyes
For you I fear to lose,
I lose to keep, and choose
Tamer as prey.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

This seems to be Al Alvarez's favourite Gunn, his debut, but as Red Comet will inform you, Al Alvarez was not always right. Bad news: it's less gay than Sad Captains. Nonetheless the talent Is here & one doesn't hide it so easily as that. This too has its rhyming thing & this time too I don't mind it I think he's a supple hand (gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar).

The opening of Carnal Knowledge:

Even in bed I pose: desire may grow
More circumstantial and less circumspect
Each night, but an acute girl would suspect
My thoughts might not be, like my body, bare.
I wonder if you know, or, knowing, care?
You know I know you know I know you know.


-It's obviously a very intricate poem this is Thom at some of his finest though it probably takes a couple reads for it to settle. I think it's best to approach this as a sonnet of the Metaphysicals there's something so Renaissance about it though maybe I'd go earlier and say Wyatt. Not sure what his training is there but it's that intricacy, the delicate, wrought lines and my gosh look at those caesurae

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What struck me most about the collection is the poet's use of repetition. Rather than say "this and that", the poet is inclined to say "this and this" or "that and that" for emphasis, and to great effect...

Over the ankles in snow and numb past pain
I stared up at my window three stories high:
From a white street unconcerned as a dead eye,
I patiently called my name again and again.
- The Secret Sharer

Now I will shut you in a box
With massive sides and a lid that locks.
Only by that I can be sure
That you are still mine and mine secure,
And know where you are when I'm not by,
No longer needing to wonder and spy.
I may forget you at party or play
But do not fear I shall keep away
With any Miss Brown or any Miss Jones.
If my return finds a heap of bones -
Too dry to simper, too dry to whine -
You will still be mine and only mine.
- La Prisonnière

Even in bed I pose: desire may grow
More circumstantial and less circumspect
Each night, but an acute girl would suspect
That my self is not like my body, bare.
I wonder if you know, or, knowing, care?
You know I know you know I know you know
- Carnal Knowledge

My favourite poem in the collection...

The lighthouse keeper's world is round,
Belongings skipping in a ring -
All that a man may want, therein,
A wife, a wireless, bread, jam, soap,
Yet day by night his straining hope
Shoots out to live upon the sound
The spinning waves make while they break
For their own endeavour's sake -
The lighthouse keeper's world is round.

He wonders, winding up the stair
To work the lamp which lights the ships,
Why each secured possession skips
With face towards the centre turned,
From table-loads of books has learned
Shore-worlds are round as well, not square,
But there things dance with faces out-
ward turned: faces of fear and doubt?
He wonders, winding up the stair.

When it is calm, the rocks are safe
To take a little exercise
But all he does is fix his eyes
On that huge totem he has left
Where thoughts dance round what will not shift -
His secret inarticulate grief.
Waves have no sun, but are beam-caught
Running below his feet, wry salt,
When, in a calm, the rocks are safe.
- Round and Round

My favourite passages from the collection...

I see myself inside a looking glass
Framed there by shadowed trees alive with song
And fruits no sooner noticed than enjoyed;
I take it from my pocket and gaze long,
Forgetting in my pleasure how I pass
From town to town, damp-booted, unemployed.
- Looking Glass

In this society the boundaries met
Of life and life, at danger; with no space
Being left between, except where might be set
That mathematician point whose time and place
Could not exist. Yet at this point they found
Arcadia, a fruitful permanent land.
- A Mirror for Poets

Among such broken wood
Wild animals give birth to sharp toothed young:
Unregenerate, they have no time for worship.
Careless, out of a possible bad may come
An undeniable good.
- A Kind of Ethics

I thought I was so tough,
But gently at your hands,
Cannot be quick enough
To fly for you and show
That when I go I go
At your commands.
- Tamer and Hawk

[Visola · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few gems in here.

[Uther Pendragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up to 5.

A strong first collection.

[Descending Angel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Highlights ~ "To His Cynical Mistress" "Lazarus Not Raised" "Is Prisonniere" "Carnal Knowledge" " Looking Glass" "Lerici" and "Incident on a Journey" .

[Gretchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read each poem twice. Once quickly, just getting the emotions and the ideas down. The second time more thoroughly, attempting to understand each line, each stanza. His observations in relationships and love particularly resonated with me. To His Cynical Mistress reminded me of many relationships I have witnessed. I don't know much about Gunn, but my guess is that he was involved in WW2; Captain of Time and Peace showed the confusion soldiers have when coming home and back to civilian society.

His poetry is situated in the time he lived in then, but I still could identify with it- some 60 years later.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poems that I can read and mull over, again and again. I pick it up every other year and read the poems like old friends revisited.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

'My lust runs yet and is unsatisifed,
My hate throbs yet but I am feeble-limbed;
If as an animal I could have died
My death had scattered instinct to the wind,
Regrets as nothing.'