Moly

by Thom Gunn

55p cloth, dustjacket, very good nice copy in a complete if dusty dustjacket

Genres: Poetry

55 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

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

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are Thom Gunn's nature poems, inspired by his experiences in 1960s California, fueled by San Francisco's hippie culture, and self-admittedly lit up by his use of LSD and other drugs. The overall feeling is of an innocent and rapturous communion with forests, fields, ocean, and people. Gunn's use of poetic devices is here the slightest in all his work. Metaphor, certainly, some mythology, as is usual for him, but almost all the poems are simple in structure and simply rhymed.

When the book appeared in 1971, it would have spoken clearly to readers who at the time were living the same "lifestyle" Gunn wrote about. Reading them now, some 45 years later, they have aged into profound nostalgia and shout with originally unintended lost innocence: that of a society which has mostly rejected the deep feelings Gunn expressed about nature. Sad.

[Bleu · Rating 3 out of 5]

i enjoyed it and its 3 and a half star . thats my review :)

[Descending Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights ~ "Moly" "For Signs" "Apartment Cats" "From the Wave" "Tom-Dobbin" "The Garden of the Gods" "Being Born" and "Sunlight".

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must have read these poems many times now since the seventies. The language is amazing, like something from Elizabethan times: wonderful sentence forms running across the lines as well as powerful metaphors.
Rereading in 2024, I wasn't quite so sure about the content.