| Current mood: |  sad |
| Current music: | 1,000 Oceans - Tori |
Such a Loss.
"Thom Gunn, a transplanted British poet identified with the San Francisco scene and the California liberated style, died on Sunday night at his home in San Francisco, his adopted hometown. He was 74.
His death was announced by his companion of 52 years, Mike Kitay.
Acclaimed as one of the most promising young poets of postwar Britain, Mr. Gunn found his own voice after he migrated to California in the 1950's and established himself in San Francisco, his home for the rest of his life. There, he wedded traditional form to unorthodox themes like LSD, panhandling and homosexuality. He experimented with free verse and syllabic stanzas. In doing so he evolved from British tradition and European existentialism to embrace the relaxed ways of the California counterculture…
“The Man With Night Sweats" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 1992) was his characteristically unsentimental vision of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, and a stark tribute to the friends he lost to it:
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.
I grew as I explored
The body I could trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,
A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.
I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.
I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead
Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me,
As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.
For that work he was given the Forward Prize for Best Poet of the Year and the Lenore Marshall/Nation Poetry Prize."
(I know this is a delayed post, but Blurty has been on the rampage this week. Thom, may you rest in peace, your words are such a blessing to all they have touched. Thank you.)
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