SOURCE: "Contemporary British Poetry," in The New Poets: American and British Poetry Since World War II, Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 251-56.

In the following excerpt, Rosenthal surveys the themes of Gunn 's early verse.

[Thom Gunn is an American-involved British poet] who has for a number of years taught at the University of California in Berkeley. In his first book, The Sense of Movement (1957), Gunn showed a fascinated interest in the world of the tough, leather-jacketed young motorcyclists and their slightly sinister, apparently pointless activity:

 On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys,
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh.

In goggles, donned impersonality,
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust,
They strap in doubt—by hiding it, robust—
And almost hear a meaning in their noise.

Exact conclusion of their...