{"product_id":"9780226503455","title":"Breakfast with Thom Gunn","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAubade\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThose who lack a talent for love have come\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eto walk the long Pier 7. Here at the end\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eof the imagined world are three low-flying gulls\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003elike lies on the surface; the slow red\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eof a pilot’s boat; the groan\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eof a fisherman hacking a small shark—\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eand our speech like the icy water, a poor\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003etranslation that will not carry us across.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat brought us west, anyway? A hunger.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBut ours is no Donner Party, we who feed\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eonly on scenery, the safest form\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eof obfuscation: see how the bay is a gray\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003edeepening into gray, the color of heartbreak.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e           \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRandall Mann’s \u003ci\u003eBreakfast with Thom Gunn\u003c\/i\u003e is a work both direct and unsettling. Haunted by the afterlife of Thom Gunn (1929–2004), one of the most beloved gay literary icons of the twentieth century, the poems are moored in Florida and California, but the backdrop is “pitiless,” the trees “thin and bloodless,” the words “like the icy water” of the San Francisco Bay. Mann, fiercely intelligent, open yet elusive, draws on the “graceful erosion” of both landscape and the body, on the beauty that lies in unbeauty. With audacity, anxiety, and unbridled desire, this gifted lyric poet grapples with dilemmas of the gay self embroiled in—and aroused by—a glittering, unforgiving subculture. \u003ci\u003eBreakfast with Thom Gunn\u003c\/i\u003eis at once formal and free, forging a sublime integrity in the fire of wit, intensity, and betrayal.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eComplaint in the Garden\u003c\/i\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e“We have before us a skillful, witty, passionate young poet. . . . Randall Mann is both attuned to and at odds with the natural world; he articulates the passions and predicaments of a self inside a massive, arousing, but sometimes brutal culture. And he accomplishes these things with buoyant lyric sensibilities and rejuvenating skills.”—\u003ci\u003eKenyon Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120357130480,"sku":"9780226503455","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226503455_p0.jpg?v=1763674719","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226503455","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}