SOURCE: "Landscapes of Repetition: The Self-Parodic Nature of Thom Gunn's Later Poetry," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2, Summer 1987, pp. 85-99.

In the following essay, Giles examines the function of self-parody in Gunn's more recent poetry.

One of the side-effects of the recent appointment of Ted Hughes as British Poet Laureate was to emphasise how far his compatriot Thorn Gunn has diverged from the native English tradition. Although Hughes and Gunn were yoked together by the 1962 Faber Selected Poems and have become a pairing institutionalised by school syllabuses in England, Gunn now says he has 'almost nothing in common' with Hughes;¹ and indeed, if eyebrows were raised when Hughes delivered his pagan drench for the christening of Prince Harry, those brows might well have changed colour entirely had Gunn been called upon to consider the royal ceremony in terms of the dishevelled American urban landscapes which have characterised his...