A review by foggy_rosamund
The Man With Night Sweats by Thom Gunn

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.