At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

by Joshua Weiner (Editor)

Overview

Maverick gay icon of poetry Thom Gunn (1929-2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments to either claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and United States alike, Gunn demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms. 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 collection of essays on this major poet, At the Barriers surveys Gunn's career from his youth in 1930s Britian to his final years in California, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226890449
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	07/15/2009
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

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 xi

List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction Joshua Weiner 1

Part I In England

All That You Praise I Take: A Glimpse of the Young Thom Gunn Eavan Boland 11

Young Gunn: Coming Out Fighting Neil Powell 19

Existentialism and Homosexuality in Gunn's Early Poetry Alfred Corn 35

Gunn, Shakespeare, and the Elizabethans Clive Wilmer 45

Part II Across the Water

Thom Gunn: The Plain Style and the City August Kleinzahler 71

Thom Gunn and Anglo-American Modernism Keith Tuma 85

From Ladd's Hill to Land's End (and Back Again): Narrative, Rhythm, and the Transatlantic Occasions of "Misanthropos" Joshua Weiner 105

Two Versions of "Meat" Thom Gunn 127

Gunn's "Meat": Notations on Craft Joshua Weiner 129

Part III In America

Summation and Chthonic Power John Peck 135

Our Dionysian Experiment: Three Theses on the Poetry of Thom Gunn Brian Teare 181

Part IV Of The World

Thom Gunn's New Jerusalem Tom Sleigh 241

Domains of Ecstasy David Gewanter 257

Considering "Considering the Snail" Paul Muldoon 269

Thom Gunn's "Duncan" Wendy Lesser 277

Coda: Thom Gunn, Inside and Outside Robert Pinsky 287

Notes 293

List of Contributors 319

Index of Names 323

Editorial Reviews

Academically pith and wise, [At the Barriers is] scholarship that’s heartfelt, intellectually rigorous, yet rarely wandering into academic lexicons that might alienate a wider readership. . . . I could not embrace Gunn’s work as fully if it were not for this deeply moving tribute that serves as a model of literary criticism: it helps us love more intelligently.”

— Michael Morse

Provincetown Arts

“Gunn would be an important figure—rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring—in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he’s an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate.

Stephen Burt

“Since his death in 2004, poetry on both sides of the Atlantic has missed Thom Gunn—his gusto, his candor, his tact, his persistent doubleness, his unfolding sympathies, his freedom from fixed ideas. This important collection of critical prose, a tribute, a reappraisal, and an extension of his life and work, returns Gunn to our attention in his living power. Poetry will be glad of it.

Langdon Hammer

“Academically pith and wise, [At the Barriers is] scholarship that’s heartfelt, intellectually rigorous, yet rarely wandering into academic lexicons that might alienate a wider readership. . . . I could not embrace Gunn’s work as fully if it were not for this deeply moving tribute that serves as a model of literary criticism: it helps us love more intelligently.”

Provincetown Arts - Michael Morse

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