Life & Wisdom Quote by Thom Gunn

Gunn’s modesty here isn’t the performative, sweater-vest kind; it’s a poet’s hard-earned suspicion of the lone genius narrative, especially the version that casts the teacher as savior. He admired his students’ work, he says, yet refuses to claim ownership over their growth. That refusal matters: it protects the students’ agency and it quietly indicts an education culture that loves to quantify “impact” as if learning were a product delivered by an expert.

The intent is almost corrective. Gunn is shifting the credit from vertical authority (teacher to student) to horizontal exchange (student to student), treating a classroom less like a pipeline and more like a small ecosystem. “Being in a class” sounds bland until you hear what it implies: deadlines, attention, the social pressure to show up with pages, the sudden visibility of your own habits when you hear someone else’s drafts. Improvement comes from proximity - to other minds, other risks, other failures - and from the collective agreement that the work matters for an hour or two each week.

As a poet, Gunn would have been keenly aware that craft is learned as much by ear and example as by instruction. Workshops and seminars are basically formalized eavesdropping: you absorb standards, styles, and courage by watching peers try. The subtext is generous but unsentimental: the teacher can set conditions, name what’s working, maybe widen the reading list. The transformation, though, belongs to the group - and to the students who choose to keep writing once the room empties.