Quotes from Thom Gunn

He turns revolt into a style, prolongsThe impulse to a habit of the time.

True, they are not at rest yet,but now that they are indeedapart, winnowed from failures,they withdraw to an orbitand turn with disinterestedhard energy, like the stars.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

Their relationship consisted In discussing if it existed.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

At worse, one is in motion; and at best, Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, One is always nearer by not keeping still.

We control the content of our dreams.

As if hands were enough To hold an avalanche off.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused/confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.

Your dying was a difficult enterprise. First, petty things took up your energies, The small but clustering duties of the sick, Irritant as the cough's dry rhetoric. Those hours of waiting for pills, shot, X-ray Or test (while you read novels two a day) Already with a kind of clumsy stealth Distanced you from the habits of your health.

Outdoors next day, I was dizzy from a sense Of being ejected with some violence From vigil in a white and distant spot Where I was numb, into this garden plot Too warm, too close, and not enough like pain.

It is despair that nothing cannot be Flares in the mind and leaves a smoky mark Of dread. Look upward. Neither firm nor free, Purposeless matter hovers in the dark.

I think most men, heterosexual and homosexual, enjoy being considered sexual objects.

I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.

I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way.

I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.

I haven't written anything in four years. I'm sort of dried up.

We control the content of our dreams.