The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poem Thread, 11/26/07

[BlueIris]

"Memory Unsettled"

Your pain still hangs in air,
Sharp motes of it suspended;
The voice of your despair—
That also is not ended:

When near your death a friend
Asked you what he could do,
'Remember me,' you said.
We will remember you.

Once when you went to see
Another with a fever
In a like hospital bed,
With terrible hothouse cough
And terrible hothouse shiver
That soaked him and then dried him,
And you perceived that he
Had to be comforted,

You climbed in there beside him
And hugged him plain in view,
Though you were sick enough,
And had your own fears too.

—Thom Gunn

[BlueIris]

1. More information about Gunn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Gunn

[BlueIris]

2. Better information about Gunn:

http://poetry.about.com/cs/contemporarypoets/p/gunn.htm

Gunn’s life: Thom Gunn was born & grew up in wartime England, son of two journalists. After his parents divorced, his mother committed suicide; her body was discovered by Thom & his younger brother. He did two years of national service, spent six months living in Paris, studied at Trinity College Cambridge, and came to California on a Stanford University fellowship in 1954. Gunn settled in San Francisco with his life partner Mike Kitay & spent the last 52 years of his life writing & teaching there.

Gunn’s poems: Gunn published his first book to great acclaim when he was just out of university. In the 1950s he was recognized as a rising poetic star in Britain (alongside Ted Hughes & Philip Larkin) for his technically assured poems of fierce philosophy. After his move to the US, he became increasingly involved in the counterculture, discovered free verse & his poetry experimented in both form & subject matter -- he wrote about rebellion & violence, bikers & AIDS victims, drugs & gay life, love & decline.

Gunn & the AIDS epidemic: Thom Gunn was HIV-negative, but lived for 50 years at the center of American gay culture, in San Francisco. Even naysayers who decried the uneven quality of his anti-traditional, “anti-poetic” work after moving to California were moved by the power & respected the poetic achievement of his collection of laments & elegies from ground zero of the AIDS epidemic, The Man with Night Sweats, published in 1992.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. thanks for posting the info. I was headed to Google --

Thom Gunn, I will remember that name.

[BlueIris]

4. Good. I wish more people knew of him and his work.

[ThomCat]

5. Wow...

Reading this, I think this is worth thinking about. The first reading is awesome, but I think i'll get more out of this rereading it later.

Yeah, I can definitely feel this one.

[BlueIris]

6. Thom Gunn is a GREAT writer.

[BlueIris]

7. Kick.

[BlueIris]

8. Mid-day kicky-poo.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. My dear BlueIris...

This is heartbreaking and so damn beautiful...

I really love it...

I feel it so profoundly...

Thank you...:hug:

[BlueIris]

10. My pleasure, C-Peg.

[BlueIris]

14. One last kick before I limp back to my sleep chamber.

[RetroLounge]

11. Yay! Thom Gunn is really an underated writer

Thanks for posting this!

:hi:

RL

[Perseid]

12. well

another of mine

I felt I was close to you
when someone said what did I do

I have no fence full of people
to lean back on
do you?

Standing at the window
looking out at
a fence
full of nothing?


I felt
I had no fence to fall back upon
I felt
I was close to you
but what did I say and what did you do?

time

[Perseid]

13. People, look within yourselves and see a possible lack of something if

you are one who has not either responded or even read this thread.


shame on you.