From the Wave

Originally from Thom Gunn’s 1971 book Moly, “From the Wave” is also included in Gunn’s 2009 Selected Poems.

In “From the Wave,” the titular wave builds and a group of surfers ride it into the shallows. The speaker of the poem watches and draws many subtle parallels between the surfers riding the wave and himself writing the poem. The speaker observes the surfers’ skillful balance, and he prizes such balance as a virtue of his own poetry: The poem itself is written in four-line stanzas, or quatrains, and each stanza features the same alternating metrical pattern and alternating rhyme scheme. Like the surfers the poem describes, the form of Gunn’s verse is precisely balanced. The poem is, on one level, a small drama of formalist aesthetics.

Gunn is known for being a formalist poet, meaning he employed meter and rhyme; he was among the foremost formalists writing in English in the 20th century, and many of his most celebrated poems are formal.

Poet Biography

Gunn was born William Guinneach Gunn. He was nicknamed “Thom,” and this is his nom de plume.

Gunn was born in 1929 in England. His parents, Herbert Gunn and Charlotte Thomson, had an unhappy relationship and divorced in 1939.