SOURCE: "The Poetry of Thom Gunn," in The Critical Quarterly, Vol. 3, Winter, 1961, pp. 359-67.

In the following essay, Fraser contrasts Gunn's poetry to that of Philip Larkin.

Thom Gunn is often classed as a Movement poet but though he first became known about the same time as the other poets of that group, around 1953, he belongs to a younger generation. He is seven years younger than Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, four years younger than John Wain, three years younger than Elizabeth Jennings. Born at Gravesend in 1929, the son of a successful Fleet Street journalist, Herbert Gunn, Thom Gunn was educated at University College School in London and at Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he had the sort of career which often precedes literary distinction, editing an anthology of undergraduate verse, being president of the University English Club, and taking a first in both parts of the English...