Close Readings Love and Death: Thom Gunn and Paul Muldoon
Nov 24, 2025
Explore the poignant elegance of Thom Gunn’s poetry, deeply influenced by the AIDS crisis and his experiences in California. Discover his unique blend of Elizabethan style and contemporary themes, as well as his rejection of confessional poetry. The discussion shifts to Paul Muldoon’s playful and rich elegies, where form and depth collide. Delve into the emotional landscape of ‘Talbot Road’ and how Gunn intricately weaves allusions to his life and relationships, creating powerful portraits through verse.
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Formal Craft Meets Modern Subject
- Thom Gunn combined strict formal craft with radically modern subjects drawn from gay life and American experimental poetry.
- His elegiac voice treats the poet as a careful stylist transforming otherness, not a confessional diarist.
Elegy Shaped by the AIDS Crisis
- Gunn's career as an elegist was defined by the AIDS epidemic and the many deaths he witnessed in San Francisco.
- The Man with Night Sweats collects his powerful, heartbreaking accounts of those slow, painful deaths.
A Hybrid Poetic Lineage
- Gunn's poetic formation fused critics like F.R. Leavis and Ivor Winters with influences from the New American Poets.
- He retained a neoclassical, rhetorically wrought approach while absorbing freer, experimental energies.
