Only Bread, Only Light: Poems

by Stephen Kuusisto

With this, his first collection of poetry, Stephen Kuusisto (author of the memoir Planet of the Blind ) explores blindness and curiosity, loneliness and the found instruments of continuation. Exploiting the seeming contradiction of poetry’s reliance upon visual imagery with Kuusisto’s own sightlessness, these poems cultivate a world of to the natural world, to the voices of family and strangers, to music and the words of great writers and thinkers.
Kuusisto has written elsewhere, "I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope; my impressions of the world at once beautiful and largely useless." So it is no surprise that in his poems mortal vision is uncertain, supported only by the ardor of imagination and the grace of lyric surprise. Sensually rich and detailed, Kuusisto’s poems are humorous, complex, and intellectually engaged. This collection reveals a major new poetic talent.

"Only Bread, Only Light"

At times the blind see light,
And that moment is the Sistine ceiling,

Grace among buildings—no one asks
For it, no one asks.

After all, this is solitude,
Daylight’s finger,

Blake’s angel
Parting willow leaves.

I should know better.
Get with the business

Of walking the lovely, satisfied,
Indifferent weather—

Bread baking
On Arthur Avenue

This first warm day of June.
I stand on the corner

For priceless seconds.
Now everything to me falls shadow

Stephen Kuusisto’s 1998 memoir Planet of the Blind received tremendous international attention, including appearances on Oprah, Dateline , and Talk of the Nation . The New York Times named it a "Notable Book of the Year" and praised it as "a book that makes the reader understand the terrifying experience of blindness, a book that stands on its own as the lyrical memoir of a poet." A spokesperson for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Kuusisto teaches at Ohio State University.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Andrew Sydlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply an amazing book of poetry. Since Kuusisto is legally blind, much of his work deals with careful and creative listening, as well as fragmented and imagined visual images. I only mention his blindness because he puts it out there as a source of inspiration from the first poem, "Blind Days in Early Youth":
Start with a hyphenated word, something Swedish--
Rus-blind; "blind drunk"; blinda-flacken; "blind spot"

Blind-pipa; "nonentity," "a type of ghost."

Many issues of living with blindness are explored, from braille ("Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille," in which passages describing a colorful Paradise are contrasted with Kuusisto's failing vision: "Each morning/I live with less color") to guide dogs ("Guiding Eyes," in which he imagines him and his guide dog as a kind of symbiotic and symbolic organism: "a kind of centaur--/Or maybe two owls/Riding the shoulders of Minerva"), to talking books ("Night Seasons," describing a lonely and desperate night of scanning books at random to hear them read aloud by a Kurzweil reader--it is part of a series of poems that chronicles his degenerating sight, where he laments such things as not being able to read print books anymore).

Looking back through the book, I'm surprised that he doesn't use more sonic imagery than I at first had thought. There is in fact a lot of visual imagery, though filtered through the dream-like voice of blindness and contemplation. And then there are moments like this: "The tenor of a room,/Worlds without dimension,/The ambient furnishings." Or this, from a poem about two birds meeting each other: "Two rainshadows,/Brothers/With the papery, blue faces/Of old money." I may have been conflating passages from his memoirs--Planet of the Blind and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, both also excellent reads--where he goes into more detail about describing the world in an auditory way.

Although sight and its limitations is the crux, the language and imagery itself is beautiful, and explores many other subjects: birds (one of his obsessions), Finland's landscape and folktales (he spent time there as a child and as an adult), and other poets (the title poem taken from a Neruda line, with other poems as odes to Ogden Nash and Ted Berrigan).

But you can't escape the fact of his limited and failing vision, and there are some painful moments, especially toward the end as he vision progressively disappears: "I'm the fool/Of the night seasons,/Reading anything, anything." Some people may find it offensive to blind people, but let me be clear that as another person with legal blindness, I can attest to how isolating and anxiety-inducing it can be when dealing with limited sight. Kuusisto explores this more explicitly in his memoirs, but it comes out implicitly in these expressions of longing. Let me also say, however, that I feel that Kuusisto has given a voice to blindness that I never heard before--a creative way to explore a different way of seeing the world. I'm just getting familiar with writers who openly explore their disability, such as Vassar Miller, Jim Ferris, and Raymond Luczak, and what they are doing with language and imagery is perhaps one of poetry's best-kept (or is that most shamefully kept?) secret.

It's a shame that this is Kuusisto's only poetry collection, and that his work is not more well known within the poetry community. At 104 pages, it is a good sized volume, but it left me hungry for more.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I was introduced to this poet’s work when I received one of the daily poems which come to my inbox from poets.org. a couple of weeks ago, and I was inspired to seek out more of his work - Only Bread, Only Light is an accomplished book of poetry. When I found out that the poet is blind, I was even more impressed! Some beautiful work in this volume! Some of the poems are a bit academic and dense for my taste, but the ones that work for me, really work.

[Chy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really cool read, it reminded me of my friend talking about the first time he got glasses. He could see individual blades of grass and leaves on trees.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some fantastic poems in here that challenge the idea of visual imagery being crucial to poetry.

[Regine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving poetry on the fading of the light.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't as excited with this book as I have been with Kuusisto's other books, especially his prose.