A new selection of poems by the celebrated gay poet. Thom 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.
"Clive Wilmer . . . is Gunn's most devoted and judicious, perceptive and illuminating critic . . . This valuable edition places Gunn with the finest postwar British poets: Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill."
Jeffrey Meyers, Kenyon Review
"Preeminent Gunn scholar Clive Wilmer has created a compendious selected volume drawn from 11 of Gunn's books, and his crisp introduction fills in many biographical gaps in the life of one of the finest poets in the English language."
Raúl Niño, Booklist
"This thoughtfully selected span of Gunn's poetry is not only an immensely pleasurable read but also a master-class in poetic form. The rigor and lyricism of his lines shine brighter still, even as the editor's notes increase the reader's awareness of the historical realities and personal desires that informed the poetry."
