At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, Gunn demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms and that experimental styles could still maintain technical and intellectual rigor. Along the way, Gunn’s verse captured the social upheavals of the 1960s, the existential possibilities of the late twentieth century, and the tumult of post-Stonewall gay culture.

The first book-length study of this major poet, At the Barriers surveys Gunn’s career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, from his earliest publications to his later unpublished notebooks, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre. This landmark volume traces how Gunn, in both his life and his writings, pushed at boundaries of different kinds, be they geographic, sexual, or poetic. At the Barriers will solidify Gunn’s rightful place in the pantheon of Anglo-American letters.

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At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, Gunn demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms and that experimental styles could still maintain technical and intellectual rigor. Along the way, Gunn’s verse captured the social upheavals of the 1960s, the existential possibilities of the late twentieth century, and the tumult of post-Stonewall gay culture.

The first book-length study of this major poet, At the Barriers surveys Gunn’s career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, from his earliest publications to his later unpublished notebooks, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre. This landmark volume traces how Gunn, in both his life and his writings, pushed at boundaries of different kinds, be they geographic, sexual, or poetic. At the Barriers will solidify Gunn’s rightful place in the pantheon of Anglo-American letters.

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At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

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Overview

Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, Gunn demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms and that experimental styles could still maintain technical and intellectual rigor. Along the way, Gunn’s verse captured the social upheavals of the 1960s, the existential possibilities of the late twentieth century, and the tumult of post-Stonewall gay culture.

The first book-length study of this major poet, At the Barriers surveys Gunn’s career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, from his earliest publications to his later unpublished notebooks, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre. This landmark volume traces how Gunn, in both his life and his writings, pushed at boundaries of different kinds, be they geographic, sexual, or poetic. At the Barriers will solidify Gunn’s rightful place in the pantheon of Anglo-American letters.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226890371
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 08/01/2009
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 344
File size: 923 KB

About the Author

Joshua Weiner is associate professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the author of two books of poetry, The World's Room and From the Book of Giants, both  published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Washington,  D.C.  
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Joshua Weiner
Introduction
PART I            In England
Eavan Boland
All That You Praise I Take: A Glimpse of the Young Thom Gunn
Neil Powell
Young Gunn: Coming Out Fighting
Alfred Corn
Existentialism and Homosexuality in Gunn’s Early Poetry
Clive Wilmer
Gunn, Shakespeare, and the Elizabethans
PART TWO    Across the Water
August Kleinzahler
Thom Gunn: The Plain Style and the City
Keith Tuma
Thom Gunn and Anglo-American Modernism
Joshua Weiner
From Ladd’s Hill to Land’s End (and Back Again): Narrative, Rhythm, and the Transatlantic Occasions of “Misanthropos”
Thom Gunn
Two Versions of “Meat”
Joshua Weiner
Gunn’s “Meat”: Notations on Craft
PART THREE In America
John Peck
Summation and Chthonic Power
Brian Teare
Our Dionysian Experiment: Three Theses on the Poetry of Thom Gunn 0
PART FOUR   Of the World
Tom Sleigh
Thom Gunn’s New Jerusalem
David Gewanter
Domains of Ecstasy
Paul Muldoon
Considering “Considering the Snail”
Wendy Lesser
Thom Gunn’s “Duncan”
Robert Pinsky
Coda: Thom Gunn, Inside and Outside
Notes
List of Contributors
Index of Names
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