# Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life - Hardcover

by **Michael Nott** (Author)

**A no-holds-barred biography of the great poet and sexual rebel, who could "give the dead a voice, make them sing" (Hilton Als, _The New Yorker_).  
**  
Thom Gunn was not a confessional poet, and he withheld much, but inseparable from his rigorous, formal poetry was a ravenous, acute experience of life and death.

Raised in Kent, England, and educated at Cambridge, Gunn found a home in San Francisco, where he documented the city's queerness, the hippie mentality (and drug use) of the sixties, and the tragedy and catastrophic impact of the AIDS crisis in the eighties and beyond. As Jeremy Lybarger wrote in _The New Republic_, the author of _Moly_ and _The Man with Night Sweats_ was "an agile poet who renovated tradition to accommodate the rude litter of modernity." _Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life_ chronicles, for the first time, the largely undocumented life of this revolutionary poet. Michael Nott, a coeditor of _The Letters of Thom Gunn_, draws on letters, diaries, notebooks, interviews, and Gunn's poetry to create a portrait as vital as the man himself.

Nott writes with insight and intimacy about the great sweep of Gunn's life: his traditional childhood in England; his mother's suicide; the mind-opening education he received at Cambridge, reading Shakespeare and John Donne; his decades in San Francisco and with his life partner, Mike Kitay; and his visceral experience of sex, drugs, and loss. _Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life_ is a long-awaited, landmark study of one of England and America's most innovative poets.

### Author Biography

**Michael Nott** is the author of _Photopoetry, 1845-2015: A Critical History_ and an editor of _The Letters of Thom Gunn._ He lives in London, England.

**Number of Pages:** 720

**Dimensions:** 2.13 x 9.38 x 6.29 IN

**Publication Date:** June 18, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 45.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 45.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life - Hardcover

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