New selected poems

Gunn, who died 14 years ago, wrote more than 16 collections of poetry and two collections of prose and essays. He referred to himself as an Anglo American writer, having immigrated from England to the U.S. in 1954. He settled in San Francisco and lived there until his death. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley off and on for more than three decades. Preeminent Gunn scholar Clive Wilmer has created a compendious selected volume drawn from 11 of Gunn's books, and his crisp introduction fills in many biographical gaps in the life of one of the finest poets in the English language. Gunn's professional career as a poet and writer spanned 50 years, beginning when he was 25 and his first book, Fighting Terms (1954), and culminated with Boss Cupid (2000). Though he may be best remembered by the reading public for The Man with Night Sweats (1992), poems from the epicenter of the then-growing AIDS epidemic hit an exacting note still heard and felt today.--Raúl Niño Copyright 2018 Booklist