Talk:Thom Gunn

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I should like to ask why the essay by Dan Schneider has been added to the links list? Without evaluating the poem in question itself, the essay is extremely poor at best, and I feel that it contributes little to appreciation or criticism of Thom Gunn's works. I have therefore removed it. Hinakana

well done hinakana. but dan schneider has left his foot note to a lot of other poets, and they are pretty much all of them hate driven and poorly written --84.169.73.77 16:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I studied with Thom at Berkeley in the 80s/90s. Did he also teach at Stanford? I think this bit should be clarified. Thank you.
 * Not 100% certain, he certainly studied there briefly though. 132.185.240.120 15:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Were you able to find an answer to your question? If not I found an article on the Standford Alumni page that notes that he taught a class there on Wednesdays called "The Occasions of Poetry". Here is the link to it. https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=36092 Vcollins2002 (talk) 17:39, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Can anybody tell me the context in which "Man With Night Sweats" is written? I'm doing it for A Level English Literature, and can't make much of it. Nonagonal Spider 03:15, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Night sweats are an early warning symptom of HIV-AIDS. The main image is of the compromised invulnerability of the flesh: Thom Gunn was 63 when the collection was published in 1992. The challenges to the skin are an aspect of the promiscuous world of male sado-masochism in which Thom Gunn moved. A moment of epiphany: of ill-omen and sudden self-awareness. -Wetman 12:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * So, did he actually have AIDS, or was he just an observer? Nonagonal Spider 19:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That I don't know. There is a difference between Thom Gunn, an English poet born in 1929 living in San Francisco, and the "I" of the poem. Thom Gunn's poetical "I" was highly developed from his first appearance: I likened him once, successfully, to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: it is that "I", the persona of a rake and nihilist, that is suddenly and severely shaken in this late poem. --Wetman 21:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * So the 'I' might not be a person in itself, but a sort of representation of all the 'rake[s] and nihilist[s]' that exist. That also supports the idea of how the 'shield was cracked', the disintegration of the aura of invincibility that youth endows. Nonagonal Spider 07:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * When a poet speaks of "I"— any poet— you'll get farther by judging the difference and distance from the poet's actual biography, which remains extraneous to the created work, though our lived and vicarious experience inform everything we do, of course. To some extent the persona is always an invention, one with a purpose within the poem. It's an inherent part of the created thing. --Wetman 09:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Could anybody clarify how this article could be cleaned up, please? Nonagonal Spider 06:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thom Gunn died from complications of AIDS. This fact weas recently deleted, "Clean-up" begins with intellectual honesty. --Wetman (talk) 05:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

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