[Thom Gunn] is unusual among English poets in allowing himself to reveal vulnerability. Without self-pity, and often hesitantly inward, he implies a half-reluctant, all but passive fascination with the unknown and the forbidden. We can follow its progress through the years [in his Selected Poems], from the wavering "Wind in the Street" through the astringent "A Map of the City" (in which private and social "malady" is linked with "endless potentiality" and "my love of chance") to the disillusioned yet persistent "The Idea of Trust." These poems, especially the third, reflect a peculiarly contemporary habit of mind: the hope that one throw of the dice can redeem something, make room for significant experience, no matter how depressive the general terms of life.

And yet Mr. Gunn is not lugubrious. His best work is exploratory in a courageously candid way…. In "Moly" … the bestial and the human in ourselves...