Year of Writing 21

1/21/12

Thom Gunn was my mentor at Berkeley from 1999-2000. He was in his 70's when I was in his workshops, and would walk in with a leather jacket, scuffed black leather boots, and an air of intense cool. He died in 2004, after living very hard. He was a member of "the movement" in the UK, then moved to San Francisco in 1960, where he met up with the beat poets, and never looked back. His poetry is spare and usually rhyming - he is one of the few poets whom makes serious use of Heroic Couplets*, which I never attempt in my written poems. So, here goes.

* a heroic couplet is a rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter - started by Chaucer in the 1300's

Thom Gunn

Now San Francisco's lost another queen
cocaine, black tar and methamphetamine
his head bent back, it rests against the couch
eyes closed, eyes closed, to Bethlehem we slouch.

a class across the bay sits empty now
a table strewn with books that breathe somehow
his boots still stomp the halls in search of those
whose fancies push the boundaries of prose.

and when the classroom fills with hopeful souls
fresh pencils in their hands, they shall extol
the one whose shadow shapes each written word
the one who still believes this is absurd.