At the barriers : on the poetry of Thom Gunn / edited by Joshua Weiner.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Weiner, Joshua.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gunn, Thom--Criticism and interpretation.

Gunn, Thom.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xii, 329 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

In England. All that you praise I take : a glimpse of the young Thom Gunn / Eavan Boland ; Young Gunn : coming out fighting / Neil Powell ; Existentialism and homosexuality in Gunn's early poetry / Alfred Corn ; Gunn, Shakespeare, and the Elizabethans / Clive Wilmer

Across the water. Thom Gunn : the plain style and the city / August Kleinzahler ; Thom Gunn and Anglo-American modernism / Keith Tuma ; From Ladd's Hill to Land's End (and back again) : narrative, rhythm, and the transatlantic occasions of "Misanthropos" / Joshua Weiner ; Two versions of "Meat" / Thom Gunn ; Gunn's "Meat" : notations on craft / Joshua Weiner

In America. Summation and chthonic power / John Peck ; Our Dionysian experiment : three theses on the poetry of Thom Gunn / Brian Teare

Of the world. Thom Gunn's new Jerusalem / Tom Sleigh ; Domains of ecstasy / David Gewanter

Considering "Considering the snail" / Paul Muldoon ; Thom Gunn's "Duncan" / Wendy Lesser ; Coda : Thom Gunn, inside and outside / Robert Pinksy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226890432

9780226890449

0226890430

0226890449

OCLC:

262429454