The Passages Of Joy

The Passages of Joy – Thom Gunn (Faber and Faber, 1982)
ISBN: 0571119212
Condition: Good (which means you can read it without gloves, but it’s clearly lived a little)

At Crappy Old Books, we like to imagine that poetry volumes keep diaries. If The Passages of Joy could talk, it might say: “Once upon a time I was bought by someone in a turtleneck, smoked over, annotated lightly, and then abandoned on a respectable bookshelf.” Now it’s resurfaced here, waiting for you to rediscover Thom Gunn’s muscular, precise, and surprisingly tender verse.

This 1982 collection finds Gunn at the height of his poetic powers: tight formal control fused with the wild pulse of life. Expect motorcycles and myth, bodies and nightclubs, the shadow of AIDS, and sudden shafts of luminous beauty. Gunn never moralizes—he notices, he celebrates, he mourns, and he does it all in lines sharp enough to cut wallpaper.

Our copy is in Good condition, meaning: the spine hasn’t collapsed, the pages are intact (with no mysterious lipstick kisses, alas), and the cover only shows the kind of mild scuffing you’d expect from forty-odd years of being pulled out and put back by hesitant readers who weren’t sure if they were “poetry people.” (Spoiler: you don’t have to be. This is poetry that smokes, drinks, and sometimes growls at you.)

So, whether you’re a long-time Thom Gunn admirer or you just want a book that makes you look sophisticated while you sip black coffee, this is your chance. Because joy, as Gunn knew, comes in passages—and sometimes those passages are slightly yellowed Faber paperbacks with a lot of character.

Crappy Old Books: rescuing neglected treasures, one pleasantly scuffed spine at a time.

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