SOURCE: "Gunn's Rhymes," in PN Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1989, pp. 33-4.

In the following essay, Dodsworth examines Gunn's use of rhyme, contending that it "is intimately related to his whole style and outlook, and is worth looking at for that reason."

Thorn Gunn's development as a poet has been slow, and is clearly defined; he began with rhyme, then added a form of half-rhymed syllabic verse in his third book, My Sad Captains, and finally went on to develop his own, characteristic free verse. Although the syllabic form has disappeared from his work, he remains faithful to rhyme; his last full-length book, The Passages of Joy, is largely in free verse, but its second section is exclusively rhymed, and rhyme crops up elsewhere in its pages. The way Gunn uses rhyme is intimately related to his whole style and outlook, and is worth looking at for that reason.

Gunn...