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his writing about the "urban underbelly" — caused many to conjecture how his lifestyle was affecting his work. "British reviewers who opposed Gunn's technical shifts blamed
California, just as American critics would, later on, connect his adventurous lifestyle with his more 'relaxed' versification," according to Orr, who added that even as of 2009, critics were contrasting "Gunn's libido with his tight metrics — as if no one had ever written quatrains about having sex before".
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one hand, and the poet's conviction and feeling about it, on the other – then Gunn's importance lies in the accuracy with which he unifies the language and emotion of experience. You're not sure where one ends and the other starts. The result is that his poems find the limits of their imaginative territory and then push beyond that." His final book of poetry was
346:(1976), the dream modulates into nightmare, related partly to his actual anxiety-dreams about moving house, and partly to the changing American political climate. "But my life," he wrote, "insists on continuities — between America and England, between free verse and metre, between vision and everyday consciousness."
403:. He also received the Levinson Prize, an Arts Council of Great Britain Award, a Rockefeller Award, the W. H. Smith Award, the PEN (Los Angeles) Prize for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, the Forward Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He won
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The poet's major stylistic change in his shift towards free verse roughly within a decade that included much of the 1960s, combined with the other changes in his life — his move from
England to America, from academic Cambridge to bohemian San Francisco, his becoming openly gay, his drug-taking,
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praised the book: "Gunn restores poetry to a centrality it has often seemed close to losing, by dealing in the context of a specific human catastrophe with the great themes of life and death, coherently, intelligently, memorably. One could hardly ask for more." As a result of the book, Gunn received
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and epigrammatic wit. In the 1960s, however, he came to experiment increasingly with free verse, and the discipline of writing to a specific set of visual images, coupled with the liberation of free verse, constituted a new source of rule and energy in Gunn's work: a poem such as "Pierce Street" in
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hailed as a highlight of the century's poetry: "Thom Gunn is a poet of 'comradely love'. Compassion has always been his domain and his work's principal emotion. If 20th century verse written in
English can be seen as a battle between memory and voice – between the phenomena and its history, on the
130:, and his later poetry in America, where he adopted a looser, free-verse style. Gunn wrote about his experience moving to San Francisco from England. He received numerous literary honors, and his best poems are reputed to possess a restrained elegance of philosophy.
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for keeping "both Rule and Energy in view, / Much power in each, most in the balanced two," found a productive tension – rather than imaginative restriction – in the technical demands of traditional poetic forms. He is one of the few contemporary poets
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described him as "the last of the commune dwellers serious and intellectual by day and druggy and sexual by night". While he continued to sharpen his use of the metrical forms that characterised his early career, he became more and more interested in
182:, his first collection of verse, was published the following year. Among several critics who praised the work, John Press wrote: "This is one of the few volumes of postwar verse that all serious readers of poetry need to possess and to study."
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and to remain close to his partner, Mike Kitay, whom he had met while at college. Gunn and Kitay continued to reside together until Gunn's death. While at
Stanford he taught a class called "The Occasions of Poetry". Gunn taught at the
146:. Both of his parents were journalists. They divorced when he was 10 years old. When he was a teenager his mother killed herself. It was she who had sparked in him a love of reading, including an interest in the work of
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201:, 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."
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During the 1960s and 1970s, Gunn's verse became increasingly bold in its exploration of drug taking, homosexuality, and poetic form. He enjoyed the bohemian lifestyle in San
Francisco so much that
335:(1967), has a grainy, photographic fidelity, while the title-poem uses hesitant, sinuous free verse to portray a scene of newly acknowledged intimacy shared with his sleeping lover (and the cat).
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126:(29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with
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reaffirmed those continuities: it contains sequences about London in 1964–65 and about time spent in New York in 1970.
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from 1958 to 1966 and again from 1973 to 2000. He was "an early fan" of the radical gay sex documentary
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The letters of the Thom Gunn / selected and edited by
Michael Nott, August Kleinzahler and Clive Wilmer
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274:)", critic David Orr has written. "This is, even for the poetry world, a pretty odd background."
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in 1993. Although AIDS was a focus of much of his later work, he remained HIV-negative himself.
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Gunn was honored in 2017 along with other notables, named on bronze bootprints, as part of
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verses by Thom Gunn, photographs by Ander Gunn, London: Faber and Faber, 1966
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745:(Revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 271–2.
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That year, Gunn published a second collection of essays with an interview,
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University of
California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
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Jack W. C. Hagstrom (AC 1955) Collection of Thom Gunn
Bibliography Papers
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1017:"Honoring gay leather culture with art installation in SoMa alleyway"
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1986: "The
Hurtless Trees" (published by Jordan Davies in New York)
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Ten years were to pass before his next and most famous collection,
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In 1954, Gunn immigrated to the United States to teach writing at
672:"Thom Gunn by Michael Nott review – sex, drugs and San Francisco"
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and six months in Paris. Later, he studied
English literature at
962:, 12 July 2009 (published 9 July online), retrieved 12 July 2009
258:. "He's possibly the only poet to have written a halfway decent
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selected by August Kleinzahler, London: Faber and Faber, 2007
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neighbourhood in San Francisco, where he had lived since 1960.
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174:, graduating in 1953, having achieved a first in Part I of the
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Shelf Life: Essays, Memoirs and an Interview (Poets on Poetry)
162:, along with several prose writers. In his youth, he attended
804:"Thom Gunn" at the website of the Academy of American Poets
270:(the archformalist) and Allen Ginsberg (the arch ... well,
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1982: "The Menace" (published by ManRoot in San Francisco)
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at the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections
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Profile and poems written and audio at the Poetry Archive
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Non-Fiction Article Award for "Thom Gunn (1929–2004)".
912:, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1998,
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Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945–1995
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Five years after his death, a new edition of Gunn's
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The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature
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San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley
51:. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
716:. Great Britain: Penguin Classics. 1971. pp.
709:
842:(Pbk. ed.). New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
631:ed. Clive Wilmer, London: Faber and Faber, 2017
166:in Hampstead, London, then spent two years doing
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185:As a young man, he wrote poetry associated with
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1084:Thom Gunn in conversation with James Campbell,
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322:would be another) to write serious poetry in
1409:Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry winners
1384:People educated at University College School
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1118:At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn
996:. Public Art and Architecture. 17 July 2017
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488:Selected poems by Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes,
363:(1992), dominated by AIDS-related elegies.
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1160:Profile and poems at the Poetry Foundation
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447:National Leather Association International
292:Flares in the mind and leaves a smoky mark
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111:Learn how and when to remove this message
1419:English expatriates in the United States
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940:, 26 April 2005, retrieved 17 July 2009
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645:, London : Faber and Faber, 2021,
298:Purposeless matter hovers in the dark.
193:. Gunn's poetry, together with that of
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827:Norton Anthology of English Literature
816:Norton Anthology of English Literature
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1144:"Thom Gunn, The Art of Poetry No. 72"
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1039:"List of winners – Living In Leather"
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1394:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
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534:, essays (expanded US edition, 1999)
290:It is despair that nothing cannot be
211:University of California at Berkeley
49:adding citations to reliable sources
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973:"Thom Gunn, poet of comradely love"
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1434:20th-century English male writers
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1086:Between The Lines, London, 2000.
1062:, Oxford University Press, 2004,
690:from the original on 26 July 2024
277:In classic verse forms, like the
1439:20th-century English LGBT people
954:Orr, David, "On Poetry" column,
481:My Sad Captains and Other Poems,
285:, he explored modern anxieties:
225:In April 2004, he died of acute
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1120:. University of Chicago Press.
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36:needs additional citations for
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559:(published by Red Hydra Press)
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1101:. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
1015:Paull, Laura (21 June 2018).
872:"Stanford Magazine - Article"
656:
409:Triangle Award for Gay Poetry
399:for Literature together with
304:"The Annihilation of Nothing"
189:and, later, with the work of
1374:David Cohen Prize recipients
1142:Clive Wilmer (Summer 1995).
1116:Weiner, Joshua, ed. (2009).
1099:Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life
670:Leith, Sam (26 July 2024) .
370:Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
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1369:People from Gravesend, Kent
897:"In Memoriam, Thomson Gunn"
395:In 2003 he was awarded the
124:Thomson William "Thom" Gunn
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960:New York Times Book Review
712:British Poetry: Since 1945
172:Trinity College, Cambridge
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899:retrieved 9 January 2018.
840:The man with night sweats
564:The Man With Night Sweats
427:was published, edited by
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361:The Man With Night Sweats
178:and a second in Part II.
164:University College School
934:"A Poet's Life Part Two"
741:Chainey, Graham (1995).
526:Selected Poems 1950–1975
1043:www.livinginleather.net
977:San Francisco Chronicle
938:San Francisco Chronicle
532:The Occasions of Poetry
354:The Occasions of Poetry
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1097:Nott, Michael (2024).
1058:Cox, Michael, editor,
806:retrieved 12 July 2009
474:The Sense of Movement,
309:Gunn, who praised his
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142:, England, the son of
379:, and his substantial
342:In Gunn's next book,
331:his next collection,
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233:, at his home in the
160:Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1150:. Summer 1995 (135).
956:"Too Close to Touch"
838:Thom., Gunn (2007).
45:improve this article
1389:British gay writers
876:alumni.stanford.edu
603:Frontiers of Gossip
545:The Passages of Joy
520:Jack Straw's Castle
405:Publishing Triangle
350:The Passages of Joy
344:Jack Straw's Castle
227:polysubstance abuse
206:Stanford University
148:Christopher Marlowe
1424:English male poets
1414:English LGBT poets
971:Guthmann, Edward,
429:August Kleinzahler
1404:MacArthur Fellows
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1202:David Cohen Prize
1127:978-0-226-89044-9
990:"Ringold Alley's
932:Biespiel, David,
651:978-0-571-36255-4
637:978-0-571-32769-0
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397:David Cohen Prize
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43:Please help
38:verification
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1364:2004 deaths
1359:1929 births
1337:Colm Tóibín
1273:Derek Mahon
1023:23 November
1000:23 November
570:Old Stories
539:Talbot Road
365:Neil Powell
328:light verse
156:John Milton
60:"Thom Gunn"
1353:Categories
918:1558491325
752:0521482445
727:014042122X
657:References
609:Boss Cupid
514:To the Air
495:Positives,
413:Boss Cupid
390:Boss Cupid
377:Shelf Life
279:terza rima
256:free verse
191:Ted Hughes
152:John Keats
71:newspapers
1261:Thom Gunn
881:5 October
858:138338588
684:0261-3077
294:Of dread.
262:while on
252:syllabics
144:Bert Gunn
920:, p. 64.
688:Archived
585:, 1993,
572:(poetry)
469:, Oxford
441:In 2020
392:(2000).
383:, which
311:Stanford
302:—
260:quintain
694:31 July
555:1989:
313:mentor
268:Winters
85:scholar
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419:Legacy
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1330:2020s
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1209:1990s
502:Touch
333:Touch
283:Dante
92:JSTOR
78:books
1259:and
1122:ISBN
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1064:ISBN
1025:2019
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883:2017
854:OCLC
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508:Moly
368:the
254:and
241:Work
215:zine
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718:143
449:’s
281:of
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