Breakfast with Thom Gunn

Randall Mann author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:28th May '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Breakfast with Thom Gunn cover

Randall Mann's "Breakfast with Thom Gunn" is a work both direct and unsettling. Haunted by the afterlife of Thom Gunn (1929-2004), one of the most beloved gay literary icons of the twentieth century, the poems are moored in Florida and California, but the backdrop is 'pitiless', the trees 'thin and bloodless', the words 'like the icy water' of the San Francisco Bay. Mann, fiercely intelligent, open yet elusive, draws on the 'graceful erosion' of both landscape and the body, on the beauty that lies in unbeauty. With audacity, anxiety, and unbridled desire, this gifted lyric poet grapples with dilemmas of the gay self embroiled in - and aroused by - a glittering, unforgiving subculture. "Breakfast with Thom Gunn" is at once formal and free, forging a sublime integrity in the fire of wit, intensity, and betrayal.

"We have before us a skillful, witty, passionate young poet.... Randall Mann is both attuned to and at odds with the natural world; he articulates the passions and predicaments of a self inside a massive, arousing, but sometimes brutal culture. And he accomplishes these things with buoyant lyric sensibilities and rejuvenating skills." - Kenyon Review"

  • Commended for Lambda Literary Awards (Gay Poetry) 2009

ISBN: 9780226503431

Dimensions: 22mm x 16mm x 1mm

Weight: 198g

76 pages