Volume 27, Number 4 · March 20, 1980
Fierce Games
By Richard Murphy
Selected Poems 1950-1975
by Thom Gunn
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 131 pp., $10.95
There are six full garbage bags at his feet, beside a burned-out barbecue and an empty case of Coca-Cola. Over a black T-shirt and jeans, a sleeveless leather jacket shows a panther tattooed on his right forearm. An incomplete growth of beard suggests he might be auditioning for the part of a debauched picaresque soldier on a Shakespearian battlefield, or a gay democratized Don Juan who virtuously cleans up his own trash. On a yard fence above his left shoulder, a black cat is making a scrutiny of the ambiguous pose. It's a photograph of Thom Gunn in California, now in his fiftieth year, looking as if he were about to recite the last words of his long poem 'Misanthropos':
Review, 2872 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |