Stephen Dunn Professions : Poet Born : June 24, 1939 Browse All Authors Top 33 quotes by Stephen Dunn And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have. Stephen Dunn insufficient like-love lovely I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent. Stephen Dunn hearted heart son What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C.... The often welcome melodic lie.... The soul's undersong. The orchestration of randomness, a flirtation with the boundaries of silence and space.... a reminder that the self wants to disappear, be taken away from itself and returned. Stephen Dunn music taken lying A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure on the imagination." Inevitably what is omnipresent in the culture exerts its pressure on our imaginations to respond to it, even if indirectly. But in this case the backdrop of 9/11, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm... all of those were forces informing the poems in some way. Stephen Dunn breakup taken reality There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend. Stephen Dunn events simple trying Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers. Stephen Dunn purpose links answers Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to disappoint you better than anyone else has. --Mon Semblable Stephen Dunn disappointment love-you thinking I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go further. I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I felt that I was a poet, which I think meant that I had begun to embody my poems in some way. I wasn't just a writer of them. Hard to say what, as a poet, my place in the world is. Some place probably between recognition and neglect. Stephen Dunn people world thinking Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done. Stephen Dunn originality something-new done I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has. Stephen Dunn disappoint trying Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery. Stephen Dunn basketball writing discovery If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences right for yourself and make discoveries as you go along and find for them some formal glue - they will be poems for others. Stephen Dunn exercise writing dirty Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another? Stephen Dunn curious elegance moments I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit. Stephen Dunn parent littles thinking I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth. Stephen Dunn whispering deny mouths There's a certain pleasure in violating the strictures of your education. The trick is, if you're going to explore ideas in a poem, to be suspicious of ideas and suspicious of your own mind at the same time. It's often a matter of orchestration and pacing. Of shaping some kind of dialectic flow. Stephen Dunn pleasure kind mind I make myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, that’s when I worry. Stephen Dunn desire worry years Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time. Stephen Dunn mask unfair knows Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can. Stephen Dunn i-can real Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H. Auden said "the clear expression of mixed feelings" to nonsense verse. Stephen Dunn say-anything feelings culture Similar Authors Abdellatif Laabi poet Ihara Saikaku poet Abram Joseph Ryan poet Ingeborg Bachmann poet Izumi Shikibu poet Bion of Smyrna poet All Authors
