Stephen Dunn
Stephen Dunn featured in:
The Best American Poetry: 2006,
guest editor Billy Collins;
and in
The Best American Poetry: 2005,
guest editor Paul Muldoon.
Stephen Dunn
Poems.
Time Line.
Books.
Between Angels.
Different Hours.
Local Time.
New and Selected Poems 1974-1994.
His
New and Selected Poems 1974-1994
contains 26 poems from
Between Angels,
although this collection is bleaker than his earlier book,
Local Time (1986).
My favorites include:
- (p.23.) Men Talk, which contains:
Friendship: someone leaning
to your side of the truth.
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- (p.35.) On the Way To Work, which contains and ends thus:
. . . How could we not
have become friends
or the kind of enemies
who must talk into the night
just one mistake away from love?
. . .
I had so much to tell her
before we die
about what I'd done all these years
in between, under, and around
truths like hers. Who knows
where we would have stopped?
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- (p.54-85.) Hawk, which ends:
and the unwritten caption
that to be wild
means nothing you do or have done
needs to be explained.
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- (p.108-109.) The Retarded Angel, which ends:
Whoever sent you
must have been desperate
and accidentally brilliant, you
with whom we'd never argue,
the damaged, unnerving,
barely hopeful, last resort.
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The book's closing poem (p.110-111) is Walking the Marshlands, and it ends:
But already we were near the end.
Praise refuge,
I thought. Praise whatever you can.
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These poems have been highly praised by respected and skilled poets.
I find it impossible to characterize a "Carl Dennis poem";
his voice is elusive and flat;
I could not recognize an anonymous poem as his.
To me most poems in the first half of the book are hard to enter, perhaps because of their quasi-academic
language, perhaps because I can't figure out their emotional stance.
The second half of the book is more accessible.
Among the poems that I did admire are:
"The Same Cold",
"Losing Steps",
"Art",
"Story",
"Men in the Sky",
"Burying the Cat", and
"A Postmortem Guide".
An inevitable favorite is
"John & Mary",
inspired by this widely distributed quote from a student's paper:
"John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met."
Data:
- 51 poems grouped in four sections, numbered but untitled.
- Number of stanzas per poem:
- 22 are written in a single stanza.
- 5 are mostly in triplets.
- 3 are mostly in 4-line stanzas.
- 1 is mostly in 5-line stanzas.
- 5 poems in 3-line stanzas.
- 1 poem in 4-line stanzas.
- 4 poems in 5-line stanzas.
- 1 poem in 6-line stanzas.
- 2 poems in 7-line stanzas.
- 3 poems in 9-line stanzas.
- 1 poem in 10-line stanzas.
- 3 poem in 11-line stanzas.
- 21 poems need more than one page.
- Acknowledges first publications in:
- The Alaska Quarterly
- APR
- Barrow Street
- The Georgia Review
- Green Mountains Review
- The Kenyon Review
- Michigan Quarterly Review
- The New Republic
- The New Yorker
- Ploughshares
- Poetry
- Prairie Schooner
- The Southern Review
Some good poems in his 5th book.
(His
New and Selected Poems 1974-1994
contains 15 poems from this book.)
My favorites include:
- Round Trip - the long opening poem.
- Sleeping with Ghosts.
- At the Smithville Methodist Church, which starts and ends thus:
It was supposed to be Art & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
... You can't say to your child
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.
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- Accident in the Snow on the Way to Amadeus, which ends:
The streetlights were invisible, though their light
illuminated the snow,
seemed almost to bring it down.
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- Two Women, which ends with an adrenaline clarity:
The rest of the day was bright yellows,
greens, every little thing coming out
of its hiding place to be seen.
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Contains 26 poems from Between Angels
and 15 poems from Local Time.
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2000.
- Poetry:
Different Hours.
- 2001.
- Pulitzer Poetry Prize.
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Links and Books.
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[Thanks for visiting.]
