Life & Wisdom Quote by Thom Gunn

Romantic culture loves the myth that poetry is just emotion poured onto the page, like sincerity is a substitute for craft. Thom Gunn punctures that fantasy with a dry, almost corrective snap: feeling is cheap; language is the hard currency. The line lands because it refuses to flatter the reader (or the aspiring poet). It implies that “deep feeling” is plentiful, even automatic, while “a way with language” is rare, trained, and earned.

Gunn’s phrasing is doing quiet work. “Doesn’t make for” is coolly domestic, like he’s talking about a recipe that fails if you over-rely on one ingredient. Then the understatement in “would be a bit of help” is the knife: of course language is the whole job, but Gunn plays it as a modest suggestion, letting the audience feel the correction rather than be lectured. It’s wit as pedagogy.

The subtext is also a defense of form against confession. Gunn came up through a mid-century moment when poets were fighting over whether raw personal intensity could carry a poem on its own. His own work, shaped by formal discipline but willing to meet modern subjects head-on, sits between camps: emotion matters, but it must be translated, not merely displayed. The quote is a reminder that art isn’t a diary with line breaks; it’s a made thing, engineered for impact. Feeling is the spark. Language is the circuitry that turns it into light.