Thom Gunn (Video)
- This poem is by Thom Gunn,
- and I'm going to read the poem
- before I give the title.
- Their relationship consisted
- in discussing if it existed.
- This poem is called Jamesian,
- and it seems like a little throwaway,
- really more of just a couplet
- or even an aphorism
- that happens to rhyme,
- but it brings a lot of baggage,
- so to speak.
- It has a lot of weight to it.
- In a sense,
- it reveals something
- essential about humanity,
- which is that all relationships
- in some ways consist of talk,
- speech, discussion.
- That's what distinguishes
- humans from other animals.
- Also, it also brings
- to bear the knowledge
- or the reader has to bring to bear
- the knowledge of the title,
- which is Jamesian - referring
- to the novels of Henry James.
- And if you don't know
- those novels, you're
- not familiar with them,
- you wouldn't really quite get the joke
- that's at the center of the poem,
- but also the seriousness of it.
- Henry James was very much involved with
- human relationships
- and very concerned about language.
- Thom Gunn was an English poet
- who lived much of his adult life
- in San Francisco.
- He moved there in the 1950s
- and lived there really
- the rest of his adult life,
- where he wrote quite a bit of poetry
- and also enjoyed
- quite a bit of other fleshy
- indulgences - including
- a lot of drugs, which
- unfortunately caused his death
- when he was about 74 years old.