58 Quotes by Thom Gunn

Deep feeling doesn’t make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

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!

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It’s also an influence in the way you see everything – in the way you feel your life.

I don’t know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

My old teacher’s definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

I haven’t written anything in four years. I’m sort of dried up.

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.

Ginsberg’s Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady.

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.