17 pages • 34 minutes read
On the Move
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
“On the Move” is a poem by Thom Gunn, published in his second collection of poems, The Sense of Movement (1957). Written in California in the spring of 1955, it is one of his best-known poems. Gunn had recently moved to California from England, and “On the Move” presents a picture of the leather-jacketed motorcycle culture he discovered there—and which is depicted in the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One (1953). The poem celebrates free-spirited motorcyclists, forever on the move. It also presents them as symbols of existentialism, a philosophy Gunn discovered in the writings of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Poet Biography
Thom Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, England, on August 28, 1929. His name was William Guinneach Gunn, but in childhood he was known as Tom. His parents were journalists. In 1938, the family moved to north London. Two years later, Gunn’s parents divorced, and in 1944 his mother died by suicide. In 1950, Gunn attended Cambridge University, where he studied English. The previous year, he changed his name to Thomson William Gunn (Thompson was his mother’s maiden name) and became known as Thom Gunn.
Gunn began to publish poetry while at Cambridge and came to terms with being gay.
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