Jack Straw's Castle and Other Poems

by Thom Gunn

His sixth book of poetry. Poems about his native England, northern California and imaginary spaces, spanning the personal, pastoral, material and transcendental.

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Thom Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004), born Thomson William Gunn, was an Anglo-American poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style. After relocating from England to San Francisco, Gunn wrote about gay-related topics—particularly in his most famous work, The Man With Night Sweats in 1992—as well as drug use, sex, and his bohemian lifestyle. He won major literary awards.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those orphans on the library shelf, checked out only twice since it was logged in the late 70s. I'm surprised because usually librarians clear dead wood over time, but then, in the poetry section, there's not a lot of incoming purchases, so might as well leave up ornamentals.

I've enjoyed later Gunn books, though this one certainly shows its age with a decided hippie streak to it. You know. A little drugs, a little nudity, a little what the hell is going on here, anyway, but peace and love and boy do we need the Age of Aquarius along about now.

Sometimes the rhyming poems bend too unnaturally for the sake rhyme, but less sing-song ones have their moments. It's just no one particular impressed me. S'OK. Glad I stopped by. Glad I was the first stamp since April 1, 2016.

[Evan Schwarz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ‘ight.

Here were some of my favorites
-Fever
-The Night Piece
-The Geysers (specifically, The Bath House)
-Bringing to Light
-Jack Straw’s Castle
-Autobiography
-Courage, a Tale
-The Release

[Descending Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights ~ "Diagrams" "Iron Landscapes (and the Statue of Liberty)" "Fever" "The Geysers" "Jack Straw's Castle" "The Road Map" "The Idea of Trust" and "The Cherry Tree".

[Timothy Juhl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not exactly my type of poetry, at least in this volume. I have read later work by Thom Gunn and enjoyed the more open, free verse style, as well as empathizing more with the subject matter, particularly the tough years of the AIDS crisis.

This is a collection of work from 1976, and Gunn is still hesitant to really explore his homosexuality, but there are plenty of hints: his longing for a young man he sees on the street, or masturbation, as he does brilliantly in 'Courage, A Tale.' In those poems, I saw the glimpses of Gunn that would arise in his later years.

Gunn was an outlaw, both as a poet and sexually. He wrote poetry (and is considered a genius in his form) during the day, and then roamed the bath clubs and dark alleys of San Francisco at night, seeking sexual encounters and all of it fueled with meth. I can get behind a poet like this, but perhaps it's only those poems that Gunn wrote in his later years. Read 'The Man With The Night Sweats,' it's raucous and touching, bold and infuriating.

[ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found a cool chapbook that’s just Jack Straw’s Castle so I’m just rating that —

“The beauty’s in what is, not what may seem.
I turn. And even if he were a dream
—Thick sweating flesh against which I lie curled—
With dreams like this, Jack’s ready for the world.”

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Instead of a review, how about two short poetic teases from the book?

"The Bed"

The pulsing stops where time has been,
The garden is snow-bound,
The branches weighed down and the paths filled in,
Drifts quilt the ground.

We lie soft-caught, still now it's done,
Loose-twined across the bed
Like wrestling statues; but it still goes on
Inside my head.


"The Night Piece"

The fog drifts slowly down the hill
And as I mount gets thicker still,
Closes me in, makes me its own
Like bedclothes on the paving stone.

Here are the last few streets to climb
Galleries, run through veins of time,
Almost familiar, where I creep
Toward sleep like fog, through fog like sleep.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

What continues to impress me about Gunn's work is his sense of life, that subtle tickling he evokes and then elaborates on. I realize there are many poems, and books, that touch on this. But with Gunn, the poem comes across as structured, or tamed, even a poem like "Jack Straw's Castle," the title poem, where Gunn plays with repeating a word, he still manages a miraculous level of control considering what it feels the poem actually says.

[Paul Ferguson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this was good in parts. One of the stars is for the design of this elegant slim volume but the poems themselves are mostly not terribly interesting. One or two have the benefit of some bracing language and there’s a pretty good one about a dog (‘Yoko’) but otherwise quite average.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some good writing here and some indifferent. Gunn doesn't seem quite at home in the Audenesque dialect he brought from England nor in the WCW mode he found in SF.