Selected Poems of Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn is one of the most singular and compelling poets in English during the past half-century. This Selected Poems, compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer, is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn's inimitable career. His poetry evokes the wild life of the body with madrigal-like elegance and illustrates the debates poetry in English has pursued in the twentieth century. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the period and identify some of its best poems.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 18 March 2021
Publisher: Faber & Faber

Thom Gunn, a renowned poet in English during the past half-century, has been described as one of the most singular and compelling voices in contemporary literature. His Selected Poems, compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer and accompanied by insightful notes, represents the first edition to fully capture the remarkable arc of Gunn's inimitable career.

While Gunn's poetry was highly admired during his lifetime, it was often misunderstood and underestimated. The scale of his achievement, and its uniqueness—a masterful Elizabethan lyric poet writing in the second half of the twentieth century—is only now being properly recognized. Anonymous in voice, even in the service of the most intimate subject matter, acute in observation, particularly the urban experience, with San Francisco as the principal site, Gunn is not merely the poet of the druggy 60s in California or the plague of the AIDS epidemic. Rather, he is the poet of the deeper-running themes, shared by Shakespeare, Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, and all his greatest exemplars, of the artist's moral and imaginative engagement with the world as it actually is, in the broadest possible sense, not as contemporary fashion might have it be.

This perspective, which strikes me as a kind of heroism, is particularly poignant when considering the context of Gunn's life and career. Born in 1929 in Bristol, England, Gunn smuggled the lyric tradition out of post-war Britain and gave it a cool, gracious renaissance in California. His poetry evokes the wild life of the body with madrigal-like elegance, capturing the essence of human experience with a rare blend of beauty and brutality.

Gunn's work illustrates with unusual clarity some of the debates poetry in English has pursued in the twentieth century—form versus improvisation, diction versus talk, the American way versus the English tradition, even, at times, authenticity versus art. To contain these contradictory impulses and to have generated a body of work that is both deeply personal and universally resonant is a testament to Gunn's extraordinary talent and vision.

In conclusion, Thom Gunn's Selected Poems is a landmark publication that showcases the full range of his poetic brilliance. Through his unique voice and insightful observations, Gunn has left an indelible mark on the world of literature, and his legacy continues to inspire and captivate readers to this day. His achievement as a poet is a testament to the power of art to transcend boundaries and engage with the world as it truly is, and his legacy will undoubtedly continue to grow and evolve as new generations discover his work.

Weight: 386g
Dimension: 130 x 197 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780571365081
Edition number: Main