As a long-time resident of the Bay area, I've crossed paths with Thom Gunn's work innumerable times, in print and in person. Though I've found his poems a bit formulaic for my taste, the topics too self-centered, I've always appreciated his ear, his sense of sound, his sound of sense. In Boss Cupid (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, and Merlot, 2000), Gunn's got at least a dozen poems that ignite the ear, the heart, and the mind, structure/body and content creating synergizing. Here's Front Bar of the Lone Star:
Fat flesh egg
400 lbs of him
set firmly on
the toothpick stool.
Fat, fat.
Styles change:
use a new word
and what you see is new.
Great not gross now,
chubby not fat.
Great flesh daddy,
chubby-chaser's delight.
Contempt or pity
of twenty years
melted in admiration.
Some feet distant,
what slender youth!
gaze fixed on
this dream of quantity.
Encouraged, squeezes
to the adjacent stool:
just enough room
for flirting from.
The point of the heart-
shaped Raphael face
gave way to
the sporty chin
of the Gibson girl.
Styles change.
The democracy of it:
eventually everyone
can hope for a turn
at being wanted.
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