And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have. Stephen Dunn More Quotes by Stephen Dunn More Quotes From Stephen Dunn I love what's left after love has been tested. Stephen Dunn tested left has-beens When I stop becoming, that's when I worry. Stephen Dunn becoming worry All good poems are victories over something. Stephen Dunn victory Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive. Stephen Dunn proof alive said I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me. Stephen Dunn juicy identity Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood. Stephen Dunn patterns order way Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body. Stephen Dunn astonishment alive body The world is always somewhat vicious. I take that as a given, but at various times in various circumstances that fact will be no more than a shadow or an echo behind some poem. Other times it will be more manifest. I try to write myself into articulations of half-felt, half-known feelings, without program. I'm always working toward getting my world and, hopefully, the world outside of me into a version that makes sense of it. Viciousness requires the same precision as love does. Stephen Dunn shadow feelings writing Oh abstractions are just abstract Stephen Dunn abstraction ache abstract A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one's smallness in the world. Stephen Dunn moments acceptance world A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession. Stephen Dunn confession style world I don't let a poem go into the world unless I feel that I've transformed the experience in some way. Even poems I've written in the past that appear very personal often are fictions of the personal, which nevertheless reveal concerns of mine. I've always thought of my first-person speaker as an amalgam of selves, maybe of other people's experiences as well. Stephen Dunn concern past world
