I haven't written anything in four years. I'm sort of dried up.
From Thom Gunn
I notice that students, particularly for gay students, it's too easy to write about my last trick or something. It's not very interesting to the reader.
I think most men, heterosexual and homosexual, enjoy being considered sexual objects.
I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.
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.
I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way.
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!
Many of my poems are not sexual.
My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.
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.
3 perspectives
1 perspectives