In a letter to Clive Wilmer, Thom Gunn described the poet and critic Donald Davie – the subject of his poem “To Donald Davie in Heaven”, first published in the TLS in 1997 and then in Gunn’s final collection Boss Cupid (2000) – as a “lovable” man. Although Davie could be “crusty, intemperate, and just plain wrong”, Gunn said he would love to write “some sort of poem” about him. On the face of it, Gunn and Davie were very different: Davie was a Christian and a conservative poet and critic, while Gunn, despite his early affinities with the Movement poets Philip Larkin and Davie himself, became fascinated after his move to California with the gay subculture of San Francisco. But Gunn was always a formalist – an admirer of Jonson, Donne and Shakespeare – and remained able to distinguish, where necessary, between subject and treatment: he found the political and religious sentiments of the Elizabethan poet Fulke Greville, for example, “at best sterile and at worst obnoxious” but could nevertheless, as Davie points out, validate them poetically in “poem after poem”.
In this poem, Gunn returns the compliment. Davie appears to him in a dream and admits to liking Auden more than he used to. This evidence of an ability to put his “love of poetry” above his concern for consistency wins Gunn’s admiration for his “ability to regroup”. But if they resemble each other in their respect for what Wilmer (speaking of Gunn) calls “chasteness” and Davie calls “purity” of diction, the closing vision of Davie in heaven also reveals the differences in their approaches: Gunn, with his Elizabethan opulence (“As you enter among them / the other thousand surfaced glories … sing at your approach”), and Davie with something “less druggy / a bit plainer / more Protestant”.
To Donald Davie in Heaven
I was reading Auden – But I thought
you didn’t like Auden, I said.
Well, I’ve been reading him again,
and I like him better now, you said.
That was what I admired about you
your ability to regroup
without cynicism, your love of poetry
greater
than your love of consistency.
As in an unruffled fish-pond
the fish draw to whatever comes
thinking it something to feed on
there was always something to feed on
your appetite unslaked
for the fortifying and tasty
events of reading.
I try to think of you now
nestling in your own light,
as in Dante, singing to God
the poet and literary critic.
As you enter among them,
the other thousand surfaced glories
– those who sought honour
by bestowing it –
sing at your approach
Lo, one who shall increase our loves
But maybe less druggy,
a bit plainer,
more Protestant.
THOM GUNN (1997)
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