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kygpub's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
3.25
"nor help create / a love he might in full reciprocate." why don't you buy a brownie the size of your head and read some poetry and maybe you'll calm down.
favs: the hug, an invitation, lines for my 55th birthday, looks, lament, the reassurance, memory unsettled
update (27.11.23): bumping this up u notch because lines for my 55th birthday still makes me smile.
update (14.1.24): bumping it down again because of my 3rd yr tutor's awful vibes. constructive criticism but make it condescending.
favs: the hug, an invitation, lines for my 55th birthday, looks, lament, the reassurance, memory unsettled
update (27.11.23): bumping this up u notch because lines for my 55th birthday still makes me smile.
update (14.1.24): bumping it down again because of my 3rd yr tutor's awful vibes. constructive criticism but make it condescending.
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
3.0
This is the first Thom Gunn collection I have read: his name is one I've been familiar with for a long time, but it took a recent London Review of Books article to make me finally devle into his work. Although I found this collection uneven, there are many striking or important things in it. The Man With Night Sweats begins with poems about ageing, about San Francisco of the 1980s, about homelessness, and family. Mostly using long lines, and always using rhyme, these poem give an entertaining, and sometimes moving or insightful, account of these themes. The final section focuses on the AIDS epidemic, and contains descriptions of sickness and death, as well as elegies on particular men, and an exploration of grief. By beginning the book on reasonably firm ground -- the normal matters of ageing and change -- the desolation of AIDS is made more stark, because it shows the suddenness and destruction of an unexpected epidemic. The context of these poems makes them particularly moving, but Thom Gunn's gentle rhymes and careful observation of character serve him well to create moving but accessible elegies that give us a window into loss. I will continue reading his work.
moonyreadsbystarlight's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
The Man With The Night Sweats paints a vivid picture of community and isolation in 1980s San Fransisco. Overwhelming melancholy may brush against hope at times, but you can feel the shadow over everything. Most of the poems overtly about AIDS are in the last chapter, but the specter is present in each chapter. There were individual poems that were good, some that I felt less strongly about - but more than that, the collection as a whole is so intentionally curated. That flow and structure, the build up to that last chapter, makes this collection that much more powerful.
I have more thought and feelings about it, but over all, this was an incredible book.
I have more thought and feelings about it, but over all, this was an incredible book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Medical content and Violence
kinbote4zembla's review
4.0
Hm. Okay.
The first three sections are good-ish, neither good nor bad, really, just perfectly adequate poetry. But the last section, which deals almost exclusively with the death and decay of the people around him, is beautiful.
The Man with Night Sweats, a collection of poems by Thom Gunn, is not flashy or overly complex. The individual poems operate — in a way that might strike people as hokey, replete with "beat"/"heat" rhyme schemes — as explorations of loss and death and change and moving on.
Good. Not great. But does it need to be?
3.5 Loves He Might in Full Reciprocate out of 5
The first three sections are good-ish, neither good nor bad, really, just perfectly adequate poetry. But the last section, which deals almost exclusively with the death and decay of the people around him, is beautiful.
The Man with Night Sweats, a collection of poems by Thom Gunn, is not flashy or overly complex. The individual poems operate — in a way that might strike people as hokey, replete with "beat"/"heat" rhyme schemes — as explorations of loss and death and change and moving on.
Good. Not great. But does it need to be?
3.5 Loves He Might in Full Reciprocate out of 5
calebslams's review
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
clari's review
5.0
Some of these poems made me weep which is a very unusual reaction for me to poetry, a beautiful collection about death, illness, love, sensuality and friendship documenting the death of many of Gunn's friends in the 1980s AIDS crisis.
onlyalookalike's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
5.0
I was first introduced to Thom Gunn’s work via a Tumblr post. The lines from ‘In Time of Plague’—"My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused, confused to be attracted by, in fact, my own annihilation.”—interwoven between photos that held thematic relation. It was all beautiful to the eyes, but aestheticism wasn't in my realm of interest at that moment. Instead, I was breathless, in a—stare into space and feel the glorious devastation of being alive—kind of way. I was instantly taken by the poet's words. Switching tabs, I feverishly began scouring the internet for the source. When I read the full poem, it was as if someone had reached down into the messy, gory bits of my insides and put to paper what I had been too ashamed to even try to articulate. The only other poem to ever give me that feeling was ‘Let it Enfold You’ by Charles Bukowski.
Over the course of the following three months I slowly, painstakingly so, made my way through this collection. I wanted to savour every last morsel. As someone who had never really ‘got’ poetry, I knew I needed to submerge myself in the words. I went over each poem, again and again, studying the use of language, finding meaning between the lines, in what was said and unsaid. I formed my own meanings and then eagerly went to google to see what others had to say. I spoke the words aloud, found readings by the poet himself on youtube, and was continuously having ‘eureka’ moments of understanding. It was a labour of love, a rare delicacy, sometimes starting, sometimes ending, my day. I never wanted it to end.
To say the collection is sad would be an oversimplification. It is at times devastating in the case of pieces like ‘Lament’ but it is also vibrantly joyous as in ‘Patch Work’. Gunn does something I love and that is connecting the seemingly wide gulf between anguish and rapture. When posed beside one another, antithetic themes can be experienced at their most poignant and visceral. Alongside the grit and death, and greasy, animalistic desire there is also growth and renewal, and chaste, angelic wonder. Best of all both these things are presented as normal and at times good and bad and neither and both and that is what being a human entails. One of my favourite themes was hunger and consumption, the need to be full—of everything, and sometimes, at any cost. The hollowness which can accompany otherness breeds a profound craving. It is an overarching concept Thom Gunn plays with—living in queer exile—being pariah-ed by society and the bonds you long for. Companionship, living your life intertwined with others, is all the more gut-wrenching when you read the parting words these fellows share at death’s door. It is haunting and yet, has made me yearn all the more for that kind of intimacy.
Over the course of the following three months I slowly, painstakingly so, made my way through this collection. I wanted to savour every last morsel. As someone who had never really ‘got’ poetry, I knew I needed to submerge myself in the words. I went over each poem, again and again, studying the use of language, finding meaning between the lines, in what was said and unsaid. I formed my own meanings and then eagerly went to google to see what others had to say. I spoke the words aloud, found readings by the poet himself on youtube, and was continuously having ‘eureka’ moments of understanding. It was a labour of love, a rare delicacy, sometimes starting, sometimes ending, my day. I never wanted it to end.
To say the collection is sad would be an oversimplification. It is at times devastating in the case of pieces like ‘Lament’ but it is also vibrantly joyous as in ‘Patch Work’. Gunn does something I love and that is connecting the seemingly wide gulf between anguish and rapture. When posed beside one another, antithetic themes can be experienced at their most poignant and visceral. Alongside the grit and death, and greasy, animalistic desire there is also growth and renewal, and chaste, angelic wonder. Best of all both these things are presented as normal and at times good and bad and neither and both and that is what being a human entails. One of my favourite themes was hunger and consumption, the need to be full—of everything, and sometimes, at any cost. The hollowness which can accompany otherness breeds a profound craving. It is an overarching concept Thom Gunn plays with—living in queer exile—being pariah-ed by society and the bonds you long for. Companionship, living your life intertwined with others, is all the more gut-wrenching when you read the parting words these fellows share at death’s door. It is haunting and yet, has made me yearn all the more for that kind of intimacy.