Anna woke me up at 5:00 this morning to tell me Thom Gunn died at age 74. Gunn is one of those rare poets who enjoyed living to the fullest, and whose work collapsed literary divisions. he was a formalist poet who wrote some of the best free verse I know. he has written brilliant essays on writers as diverse as Yvor Winters, Robert Duncan and Basil Bunting. Gunn never shied away from troubling subject matter whether it be the bath houses in SF or the cannibal practices of Jeffery Dahmer.

I heard him read only once last spring in a little dive bar called Sweetie's. a poet friend Andrew Paul Sullivan and I drove to SF to hear him. I was awed by his verse as by his appearance: close-cropped grey hair, black leather jacket and motorcycle boots, earring and a tattoo on his right forearm. he looked like an old biker or punk rocker than a man who made his career working as a part-time lecturer at UC Berkeley. he was in fantastic form during the reading and he kept calling out to August Kleinzahler who was in the back of the bar.

afterwards, I walked up to Gunn and asked if he could sign a couple of books. he didn't have a pen so I handed him mine, a Pelikan, a writerly fetish I bought several years ago when I made dirt wages. he was distracted by all the noise and people and being high from a brilliant reading he pocketed my pen. I said, Hey man that's my pen. upon which he retrieved it from his pocket and handed it back. I feel it was an honor to have my only writer fetish lifted by Gunn. the pen is in my shirt pocket even as I type.

here is a poem of his that is a favorite of mine for it is an example of his tremendous humanity.

Courage, A Tale

There was a Child
who heard from another Child
that if you masturbate 100 times
it kills you.

This gave him pause;
he certainly slowed down quite a bit
and also
kept count.

But, till number 80
was relatively loose about it.
There did seem plenty of time left.

The next 18
were reserved for celebrations,
like the banquet room in a hotel.

The 99th time
was simply unavoidable.

Weeks passed.

And then he thought
Fuck it
it's worth dying for,

and half an hour later
the score rose from 99 to 105.

Collected Poems (FSG, 1994)