Gunns lengthy and distinguished poetic career includes numerous
volumes of poetry and essays, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship and
a Lila Acheson Wallace/Readers Digest Fellowship. His acclaimed
last book, The Man With Night Sweats (1992), was marked by its
wrenching, delicate AIDS elegies. The new collection strikes a
tonal balance between an unsentimental awareness of death and a wry
but often exuberant account of the everyday tyrannies of love.
`Save the word / empathy, sweetheart, / for your freshman essays,`
drawls one poem. `In the Post Office` begins by describing a sexual
attraction to a stranger, but resolves into a meditation on a
friends death. In the poems final lines, elegy and celebration
merge. The poet becomes the `survivor, as I am indeed, / recording
so that I may later read / Of what has happened, whether between
sheets, / Or in post offices, or on the streets.` Perhaps the poems
are at their best when they take their greatest risks, as in
`Troubadour: Songs for Jeffery Dahmer` in which a catalogue of
horrors, including a severed head perched on a shelf `between
headcheese and lard,` emerges bathetically from the desire to `find
more tangible effects / Than what the memory collects.` Gunns
inventive yet controlled formalism, a hallmark of his work, is
reminiscent of Renaissance poets like Wyatt and Donne. His liberal
use of classical and biblical allusion is never gratuitous, as the
sexy, thoughtful cycle about King David that closes the book
attests. A lithe and lyrical volume by a master of contemporary
poetry. (Kirkus Reviews)
In some respects a sequel to The Man With Night Sweats, Boss Cupid
is a memorialising of friends who have died, an anatomy of
survival, and a self-portrait of the poet in age. The poems are
written under the sign of Cupid, 'devious master of our bodies',
but their intimacies are always heard against the sociable human
hum of an entire community which Gunn depicts in poems of fluent
grace, as formal as they are relaxed.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
