Dunstan Thompson

Dunstan Thompson (August 30, 1918 - January 19, 1975) was an American poet. Phillip Trower, Brief Biography, Dunstan Thompson Poems 1950-1974].

Life
Thompson was born in New London, Connecticut, the only child of Virginia Leita (Montgomery) and Terry Brewster Thompson. He was educated at St. Mary’s Annapolis, Georgetown Prep in Washington, Villanova prep in the Ojai valley of California, and Canterbury prep school in Connecticut. He began writing poetry in his final year at Canterbury. In 1936 he went to Harvard University, where he served as editor of Harvard Monthly. He studied under Robert Hillyer and Theodore Spencer, both of whom encouraged his ambition to write poetry.

In both 1938 and 1939 he spent a month in Rye, England, studying at a summer school for poets run by Conrad Aiken. Aiken took to Thompson, whom he described as "the cleverest" "honest and psychologically alert," and introduced him to T.S. Eliot (whom he visited both years).

Thompson left Harvard in 1939 without a degree, and moved to New York City, where he lived for the next three years. Mentored by the poets Oscar Williams and Horace Gregory, he contributed poetry to numerous magazines, and even founded and funded his own literary magazine, Vice Versa, which ran for three issues, from November 1940, to January 1942, and which he edited with his friend from Harvard Harry Brown.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1942 during World War II, first serving in a medical unit, but then (thanks to Brown's influence) joining the U.S. Office of War Information in London, where (in the words of Aiken) he succeeded in "getting to know All the Right People in two seconds flat."

his Poems (Simon & Schuster) was published in 1943. Some of his poems were translated by Borges shortly after. Also in 1942 a novel The Dove with the Bough of Olive appeared.

After World War II he travelled in the Middle East and settled in the United Kingdom. In 1947 Lament for the Sleepwalker, another book of poetry, was published. A travel book The Phoenix in the Desert was published in London in 1951.

Subsequently he published little, and virtually disappeared from literary circles; a few poems were taken by magazines. Poems 1950-1974 (1984, Paradigm Press) was a posthumous collection.

It has been stated that he was homosexual, and also that he was a Christian convert who changed his lifestyle in consequence.

Poetry

 * Poems. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943.
 * Lament for the Sleepwalker. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947.
 * Poems 1950-1974. Paradigm Press, 1984.

Novels

 * The Dove with the Bough of Olive. 1942.

Non-fiction

 * The Phoenix in the Desert. London: 1951.