BOOKS
Sometimes th ey hang a t the sides
Like the dead weigh ts of a clock
Sometimes they clench into fists
Around th e neck of anger.
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But his r iches t work is in neither o f those veins. As his
Selected
Poem s'
ch rono logica l rearrangement makes clear, he h as been most
successful wh en his dry,
raffin e
intelligence is in command. I admire
those poems-like "Fragment : T o a Mirror," "The Assassina tion ,"
" Portra its o f the Sixties," "Sona tina in Green ," or his wonderful new
pas toral memory-poem, "Childhood " -that indulge in metaphysical
rep artee, or in wha t Justice himself calls, with an apposite allusion to
Wa ll ace Stevens, "Mordancies o f the armchair l" He is a poet of
in vention ra ther than o f vision-the impetus for a poem often coming
from , say, themes in a French p oem , or the forma t of a sonnet or
ses tin a, or some compos itional g immick. Still , the res ults have the fine
autho rity- simultaneously unnerving and satisfying -of a canny poet
working, if no t a t the heights o f the art, then a t least a t the height of his
powers .
For his
Se lected Poem s 1950-1975,
Thom Gunn has drawn from
six prev ious books (his insubstanti al 1966 collection
Positives
has been
wisely excluded ). Gunn h as chosen spar ingly; roughl y h alf of his old
work is here and , fl outing a current custom , he has added nothing new.
Ev identl y he was determined to represent himself by his most "serious"
and composed work . Gone, fortun ately, are most of his early starter–
poems, and those wilder, la ter poems set in leather bars or set up by
LSD. Go ne too , unfortuna tely, a re some of his more interes ting recent
long poems, such as "The Geysers" and the title poem from his bes t
book
J ack S traw 's Cast le
(1976). As a result his talent and achievement
seem even more modes t than they are. T o say tha t Gunn began as and
rema ins a minor poet is no t to denigrate his craftsmanship , which is
always a lluring and sometimes arres ting, nor to den y tha t he has
written a hand ful o f superb poems- among them , the Audenesque " In
Pra ise o f C iti es," "Misanthro pos," "Moly," and " For Signs." His
poems are each a clean , well-lighted place; they value and strive for
lucidity o f conception and integrity of sentiment. What they lack is any
susta ined , even unwi eldy ambition ; there is never very much urgency
or wit, beauty or surprise.
Gunn h as a lways been an anomaly since moving here from
Eng land a quarter-century ago. In many ways he has been a deliberate
outsider in this country o f w illful , swaggering poetic presences. H e has
