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The Man With Night Sweats, originally published in 1992, sees Thom Gunn writing at the height of his powers. The collection begins with poems that celebrate love and sex and bodies – whether the exuberance of a swimming otter, the nimble moves of a tow-headed skateboarder or the habituated coming together of two old lovers. In devastating contrast, the poems in the last section are unflinching portraits and accounts of the illness and deaths of friends during the AIDS epidemic. Written out of a lifetime’s experience of perfecting his art, these poems are unsurpassed in elegiac intensity and among the most poignant responses to those terrible times.
‘Gunn has risen to his inescapable new subject with verse of quiddity, depth and terrible truthfulness.’ Financial Times
‘Elegies as unblinking and heartfelt as anything he has written.’ The Times
Thom Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent in 1929. He published his first book of poems, Fighting Terms (1954), while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge. That same year, he moved to California and stayed there for the rest of his life, teaching at Berkeley and living in San Francisco. He published nine books of poetry, including The Man…
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Celebrating our 90th anniversary, Faber staff take on the tricky task of selecting their three favourite Faber books.