Poets have the ultimate license; like a wizard’s wand. In our times of starched and ironed political correctness, any public figure raising a contentious issue is drawn and hung out to dry. But Thom Gunn, being a poet, could explore all dark issues like violence, sexuality, anti-social behaviour because he could coat it all under beautiful verse.
All great poets have great eyes. They can see things where no one else can or uncover hidden feelings which you didn’t know even existed.
An American poet who wrote on biker gangs, Italian paintings and sex among other things. The recurrent theme is difficult to understand but I think he wrote about human feelings. "Touch" on intimacy, "Trust" on that, "on the move" on violence, "Santa Maria del popolo" on human frailty. He also does explore nature but always nature through living eyes and not nature in isolation. In this also he was exploring human desire for freedom I think. So how we rate Thom Gunn?
Developing the earlier argument that a great poet has great eyes, well thats not enough. Even great scientists have great eyes but they are not poets, they are scientists. So a great poet also must have great art. I guess art is adding a beauty dimension to something. So greater the beauty dimension in a work of art, the purer art it is. Thats why Gauguin’s pink horses are so beautiful because they are so close to purity and so right in their environment even though they are pink. So does Thom Gunn have the eye and the purity?
eye: "he fingers the little privacies of those who acted as if there should be no privacy" from "trust" to describe the actions of a thief; or "you turn and hold me tightly, do you know who I am or am I your mother or the nearest human being to hold on to in a dreamed pogrom" from "touch".
purity: so can we find in Thom Gunn a line which content wise doesn’t mean anything or doesnt promise much but... very simply just sounds great. I guess "Waiting for when the sun an hour or less conveniently oblique makes visible" is a beautiful line which qualifies Thom Gunn for the status of a great poet.
Touch
My personal favourite: “Touch", why? Find out for yourself. No matter how much you analyze poetry, ultimately it is about feeling the complex feelings that great poetry always generates. Half known, half unknown and always intensely personal.
You are already
asleep. I lower
myself in next to
you, my skin slightly
numb with the restraint
of habits, the patina of
self, the black frost
of outsideness, so that even
unclothed, it is
a resilient chilly
hardness, a superficially
malleable, dead
rubbery texture.
You are a mound
of bedclothes, where the cat
in sleep braces
its paws against your
calf through the blankets,
and kneads each paw in turn.
Meanwhile and slowly
I feel a is it
my own warmth surfacing or
the ferment of your whole
body that in darkness beneath
the cover is stealing
bit by bit to break
down that chill.
You turn and
hold me tightly, do
you know who
I am or am I
your mother or
the nearest human being to
hold on to in a
dreamed pogrom.
What I, now loosened,
sink into is an old
big place, it is
there already, for
you are already
there, and the cat
got there before you,
it is hard to locate.
What is more, the place is
not found but seeps
from our touch in
continuous creation, dark
enclosing cocoon round
ourselves alone, dark
wide realm where we
walk with everyone.
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