Gunn, Thom

New York. 1976. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Previous Owner’s Inscription in Front, Otherwise Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374178518. From the library of Jean Pumphrey former literary director of the Marin Poetry Center. 77 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Charles Skaggs. keywords: Poetry England America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - ‘I would like to recommend the poetry of Thom Gunn to anyone who requires that poetry be intelligent as well as sensuous,' wrote Raymond Oliver in Southern Review. ‘Gunn's matter is like raw meat; his forms, like those of Plato . partake of divinity. And his poems put the two together.' Some of the poems in Jack Straw's Castle, Thom Gunn's sixth collection, are set in England, where the author was brought up; some in the United States, especially northern California, where he has lived for twenty-two years; and some in imaginary places. The verse is as richly varied in form as in place and subject matter. Gunn's rhymed recollection of ‘Last Days at Teddington' details an experience as affecting as his sensual, free-verse re-creation of ‘The Plunge' into a swimming pool. ‘An Amorous Debate' is ironically reminiscent of romantic sixteenth-century dialogue. There are poems on various trees, a Newfoundland dog, a speed freak, an aunt, the English master of woodcuts Thomas Bewick, and Jack Straw - the speaker of the title poem who in dream confuses his house with his head. A major collection of new poems, Jack Straw's Castle confirms Thom Gunn' stature as one of the most important and provocative poets writing in English today. inventory #41141 ISBN: 0374178518.