New Selected Poems

by Thom Gunn, Clive Wilmer (Editor)

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.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

336 pages, Hardcover

Published November 13, 2018

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

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I maybe jumped the gun — no pun intended — when I bought this collection, but many of these poems did not resonate with me. I don’t know how many Gunn has written but it seems those that were chosen were not among his very best work.

I do enjoy the anecdotes and footnotes provided, however. I thought they were inciteful and added an extra layer of understanding to Gunn’s craft. Glad to own nonetheless.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve known about Gunn’s poetry for roughly half a century—since college certainly, though it’s possible we read The Wound or The Byrnies in high school. I’ve never given him a lot of time, and I suspect that until I bought this book (a $2.99 ebook) I’d never owned anything but the dual collection Moly/My Sad Captains. When his Collected came out in the ‘90s I was corresponding with Donald Hall and asked if Gunn really deserved a Collected—Hall’s reply was sharp: of course he did. But I remain unconvinced. Based on this”new selected”, even a selection is more than one needs. The formal poems almost always display a pleasing musical heft and succeed (at least partly) on their music, even if the content is nothing especially amazing. But the free verse poems are pretty much awful: bland, prosy, no better than the awful mass of American “plain speech” which has dominated our poetry for 60 years now. Gunn purportedly believed that discourse was a part of and purpose of poetry, but if the discourse is just ordinary prose discourse, who cares? If you want to dip into Gunn, stick to the formal verse. The rest is of little or no value.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I read the letters, and thought that the poetry should be read as well. Both books have portraits of Gunn on the cover. Why, I wondered. In my own library of poetry books, there are portraits of James, Broughton, Bob Kaufman, Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Patchen and Ezra Pound on their books. All men.

Still, there is something in the poetry where connective tissue from the past rang true. San Francisco in the time of AIDS. The J Church line.

[Bg96 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too formal / classic for me.

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The range and growth in Thom Gunn's work across the poems collected here are fascinating. The early poems feel somewhat restricted in their taut formalism and strict rhyme schemes. I much preferred his later work from The Man With Night Sweats, which plays looser with form and was one of the first great works about the AIDS epidemic.

[Salvatore · Rating 3 out of 5]

His later work is wild and fascinating and some of the better poetry I've read. It's too bad I was reading this whilst reading Beckett - since Beckett's experiments with consciousness are more successful, more frantic, more powerful. 'Jack Straw's Castle' on I plan to return to.

[Liván · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grandioso e interesante autor. Me encantó esta edición llena de contexto para entender la figura tras el poema tanto como el texto en sí.