In July, the Press published At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn, the first book-length study of this major poet. For the book, editor Joshua Weiner gathered together an all-star cast of contributors—including Eavan Boland, David Gewanter, Wendy Lesser, Paul Muldoon, John Peck, Robert Pinsky, and Tom Sleigh&mdash to survey Gunn’s career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre.
Now the University of Maryland Library has launched a new digital exhibit, “‘Well, I wanted a new vision…’: Thom Gunn and ‘Misanthropos,'” to celebrate the book’s publication. In crafting his essays for the collection, Weiner relied heavily on Maryland’s collection of Gunn’s papers. My making these materials available, the library offers a rare glimpse into the process of research.