Thom Gunn

Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 in Gravesend, Kent – 25 April 2004 in San Francisco) was an Anglo-American poet.

Quotes

Collected Poems by Thom Gunn (1994)

• These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
  No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.
  • Moly (l. 9-10)
• Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,
  To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly.
  • Moly (l. 21-22)
• Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
  The great grey rigid uniform combined
  Safety with virtue of the sun.
  Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.
  • Considering the Snail (l. 5-10)
• One joins the movement in a valueless world,
  Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled,
  One moves as well, always toward, toward.
  • On the Move (l. 30-32)

Other

• Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
  He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
  The impulse to a habit of the time.
  • "Elvis Presley,", in The Sense of Movement (1957).
• My thoughts are crowded with death
  and it draws so oddly on the sexual
  that I am confused
  confused to be attracted
  by, in effect, my own annihilation.
  • "In Time Of Plague," in The Man With Night Sweats (1992)

External links

• A Poet's Life, Part One (San Francisco Chronicle)
• A Poet's Life, Part Two (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Study Guide to Gunn's poetry
• Poets.org: Thom Gunn