Gunn, Thom - Gunn, Thom 1929–
Gunn, Thom 1929–
A British poet now living in California, Gunn, who began by writing about Teddy boys, now writes about LSD. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 17-18.)
In this first book Gunn revealed himself above all as a love poet, an astute worrier of his own tough sensibility; sharply aware of the poses and stratagems of lust. Vigour and clarity had at last begun to be more fashionable at that time, but Gunn was sinewy and literary too (literary in a traditional and even, for then, an antique manner, not with the post-war Oxford irony of Amis or Wain) and the result was that oddly effective voice of his, a mixture of the Jacobean and the colloquial which took flatness in its stride without too often appearing typically fiftyish….
In A Sense of Movement the discrepancy is often such that one finds oneself demanding a more cogent or attractive "moral", a development no doubt encouraged by Gunn's subject matter. It...
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