Everything Else in the World: Poems

by Stephen Dunn

“Essential to contemporary poetry collections.”—Library Journal

In his fourteenth collection, Stephen Dunn, “one of our indispensable poets” (Miami Herald), continues to probe brilliantly the unsaid and the elusive in the lives we live, in language that Gerald Stern has called “unbearably fearless and beautiful.”

Genres: Poetry, Literary Fiction, Fiction

94 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Stephen Dunn was born in New York City in 1939. He earned a B.A. in history and English from Hofstra University, attended the New School Writing Workshops, and finished his M.A. in creative writing at Syracuse University. Dunn has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing.

Dunn's books of poetry include Everything Else in the World (W. W. Norton, 2006); Local Visitations (2003); Different Hours (2000), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry; Loosestrife (1996); New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994); Landscape at the End of the Century (1991); Between Angels (1989); Local Time (1986), winner of the National Poetry Series; Not Dancing (1984); Work & Love (1981); A Circus of Needs (1978); Full of Lust and Good Usage (1976); and Looking For Holes In the Ceiling 1974. He is also the author of Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry (BOA Editions, 2001), and Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (1998).

Dunn's other honors include the Academy Award for Literature, the James Wright Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has taught poetry and creative writing and held residencies at Wartburg College, Wichita State University, Columbia University, University of Washington, Syracuse University, Southwest Minnesota State College, Princeton University, and University of Michigan. Dunn is currently Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing and lives in Port Republic, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dunn is a contemporary poet I enjoy, but this collection didn't stand up to others of his (Different Hours and The Insistence of Beauty, in particular). He has a skill for writing a solid meditative narrative, but a lot of these poems seem a little dull or easy. I liked a few poems, though, including "Summer Nocturne."

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's there to say about Stepehn Dunn that hasn't been said?
(Woha, day-sha-voo)
Here's the the thing about the ol Dunn Beetle. His ability is born of accessibility, it's the main priority here. Steve kicks nobody out. There's no, "Haven't read the Aeneid recently? Then get the fuck out!" I've probably loaned out this guy more than any other poet. Not because he's my favorite, but because more different kinds of people can agree on him and poets like Billy Collins, Wislawa Szymborska, the accessible lookers, these are what necessity breeds.
It kinds of reminds me of the expressionists. Not in the profundity of visual images but in their emphasis on the foreground as focal point. With suburban poetry and expressionism there's no subterranean level of meaning hidden; no background of referent. The meaning is on the surface. Head-scratches will find their scalps unagitated by these poems.
To an extent, in that supreme clarity can be deceptive in its lucidity, Or, "What a nice poem. Next,"

Finally, here's a typed out section from the last poem From the Tower at the Top of the Winding Stairs

It seemed that the mountain of Vermont were hunchbacks
ringing their own silent bells, and above them
an opaqe, cloudless sky a model of how to remain calm while other parts of you might be thunder and rain
From the tower it didn't take long to see the dangers
in believing that seeing was knowing--high flying birds
revealing our needs for angels, some wispy scud
evidence of a past I'd yet to resolve. Still wasn't
the psychological real? The tower itself had no opinion.
Men and woman could be seen planting tomatoes
and rows of lettuce, touching each other goodbye,
and from this height others could be imagined creating
something wonderful out of motives like envt, even spite,
warding off, as they felt it, melancholy's encroachment.

Dude's like motherfuckin' Montaigne.

Ok, that's the end of the review. Below I'm just going to say one more thing, but I have to warn you, it might be a little morbid. So if the reader is squeamish, I wouldn't read on.

So, so, it was super weird. So, I've been going to the same Goodwill for years and they almost never have any good poetry. Even used bookstores I have a rough time finding poets I like. So, so, last time I went, there were like, seven Dunn books. I've at best seen one or two and there were like seven. Makes me think, like, maybe something happened, ya know? Like, like, an explosion. Or, or, like a pact? Ya know? I should type that. I just thought it was so weird after years of not seeing any Dunn books, one day, a bunch. Makes me think something happened. Ya know?

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over time, Stephen Dunn has dared to tackle the intangible as well as the concrete. This is in addition to the multitudinous sides of human existence he has always explored. Dunn does not reveal what we want to know about ourselves, but what we need to know. Just like in _Riffs & Reciprocities_, where opposites found similarities and agreement and common bonds within each other, so do the explorations of this fine poet in this collection touch upon not only the light and dark, but the softly illuminated as well. From taking on the challenge of explicating the adulterer to the point of empathy and maybe unwilling agreement with the reader, to the wisdom of self that comes through the revealing of dark family secrets, Dunn rubs the tarnish off of hidden heirlooms that may still never make their way out to the mantle to be proudly displayed, but will make themselves a little more relevant to your daily chores. Dunn is someone to read a little more of every morning to make help make your day a little more meaningful.

[Ann Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This small book by Pulitzer Prize winner, Stephen Dunn, was a very quick and enjoyable read. Mr. Dunn sums up some of our ordinary thoughts and feelings in the poems Lucky and The Lost Thing. In Replicas, Mr. Dunn provides insight into the masks that many people wear to cocktail parties where appearances can be very deceiving.

The poem Signs illustrates some of the ridiculous connotations in some of our traditional signage, such as Slow Children and Falling Rock Zone. In his words are the memory of a kiss, the aura of the aftermath of making love and Mr. Dunn’s attempt to memorialize time. These are all moments that we share in common, just like everything and everyone else in the world. It is in our sense of commonality that we identify with these simple portraits preserved for all time by the written word.

[Todd Spicer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, one of the best poetry collections published in the last five years. Stephen Dunn is taught, expressive, deep, heartfelt, candid and insightful. In short, inspiring in the highest of human order.

[Я. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection, though not as exciting as his other work.

[Liam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title poem resonated well with me. I studied the Liberal Arts and had many entry level jobs.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes. I enjoyed these. Often the language seemed perfect. They do not pull at me, but remain distantly beautiful.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are the poems of a man who has been around awhile. An old man writing old man poems, which I do not mean perjoratively.

[Dot Penkevich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read and loved some poems by Dunn that I'd encountered in various anthologies (poems such as "Sweetness" or "After Making Love"), I was excited to come across this collection at the library. I liked it and it was a quick read, but ultimately, "Everything Else in the World: Poems" left me wanting a little more from it of, well, everything else in the world. The voice and style and much-noted "accessibility" of Dunn were all there, but the poems didn't really stop me in my tracks. I want a poem, or even a phrase from a poem, to stick in my brain like gum affixed to the underside of a desk, so immovable you'd need a knife to pry it free. These poems were definitely gum-like, but they were lacking in stickiness and a few tasted even a little bit stale. For example, there's a poem in the collection called "You'd Be Right" that describes a man having an affair and whether we as outsiders can judge if it was worth it for him or not. The poem is a bit tongue-in-cheek, starting with the line "He often needed two women," but it absolutely pales in comparison with another of Dunn's poems about an affair called "Tenderness" from Between Angels: Poems, which includes lines like "I can't remember / ever saying the exact word, tenderness, // though she did. It's a word I see now / you must be older to use, / you must have experienced the absence of it // often enough to know what silk and deep balm / it is / when at last it comes" and "Oh abstractions are just abstract / until they have an ache in them."

Overall, a nice little collection, but not much worth holding onto. I think I may try another of his collections at some point, probably Different Hours. Here was a favorite poem from this one, though:

The Kiss
She pressed her lips to mind. -a typo.

How many years I must have yearned
for someone's lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she's missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek's ear
speaking sense. It's the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to reading Everything Else in the World, I had only come across Stephen Dunn poems by chance. An anthology here, a poets.org search there. Finally, after discovering the poem "The Kiss," I knew it was time to take a deeper look at this particular poet and so I bought Dunn's fourteenth collection of poems, which happens to contain the one that pushed me over the edge.

With only a few poems to form an opinion, I was not quite expecting what I found here in this collection. It all feels distinctly similar to Billy Collins, though Dunn seems to make more of what it means to be an adult in today's world. Playful at times, but always incredibly attentive to subtle shifts of thought and understanding. There's honesty and precision, coupled with a deep emotion and need to communicate more than just a field of vision. Dunn seems more interested in the people that inhabit the world and how they shape it as opposed to the world as it exists apart from them (perhaps noting that there really is no such world any longer). Indeed, more time seems spent in a mental world than a physical one, though one is overlaid on the other.

Having now spent more time with Dunn's poetry, I can say with absolute certainty that I'll be seeking out even more of it. To give you a taste, here are some of my favorites, including the poem that brought me here and the one that lends its name to the collection:


"Everything Else in the World"

Too young to take pleasure
from those privileged glimpses
we're sometimes given after failure,
or to see the hidden opportunity
in now getting what we want,
each day I subwayed into Manhattan

in my new, blue serge suit,
looking for work. College, I thought,
had whitened my collar, set me up,
but I'd majored in history.
What did I know about the world?

At interviews, if asked about the world,
I might have responded--citing Carlyle--
Great men make it go, I want to be one of those.
But they wanted someone entry-level,
pleased for a while to be small.

Others got the jobs;
no doubt, later in the day, the girls.
At Horn & Hardarts, for solace
at lunchtime, I'd make a sandwich emerge
from its cell of pristine glass.
It took just a nickel and a dime.

Nickels and dimes could make
a middleman disappear, easy as that,
no big deal, a life or two
destroyed, others improved.
But I wasn't afraid of capitalism.
All I wanted was a job like a book
so good I'd be finishing it
for the rest of my life.

Had my education failed me?
I felt a hankering for the sublime,
its dangerous subversions
of the daily grind.
Oh I took a dull, well-paying job.
History major? the interviewer said, I think
you might be good at designing brochures.

I was. Which filled me with desire
for almost everything else in the world.



"You'd Be Right"

He often needed two women. Just one--
how unfair to expect from her so much!
Intelligence before and after sex,
a certain naughtiness during,
gifts of companionship and solitude.
But he liked the day-to-day of marriage
and its important unimportances,
quiet moments made livable
by the occasional promise of a fiesta.
And though he knew it wasn't enough
for her either, and always assumed
she had similar thoughts, if not secrets,
nevertheless you may be thinking cad,

maybe even monster, you who've been happy,
or differently unhappy, or obeyed all your life
some good rule. And you'd be right
if you guessed his wife's eventual coolness,
her turning away, and, when he didn't leave,
the slow rise of the other woman's disappointment,
which would turn to anger, then to sadness.
You'd be right, but can you imagine what joys
accrue to the needy over a lifetime of seeking love?
Can you say you're not envious, or that you're sure
it wasn't worth what he risked and lost?



"Cut and Break"

Each morning the sullen but excellent masons
arrived at six to cut and lay stone
for the riding walls of our walkway.
Hung over, they worked deliberately, didn't care
that anyone might be sleeping or disturbed.
We learned not to speak to them before noon.

It was western Maryland; for me a new home,
new love, at once connected and removed.
Guns and Jesus rhymed on many a pickup.
The local newspaper ransacked
the Bible to edify and guide. Democracy:
how hard to like it every hour of the day.

Meanwhile, when the stonemasons spoke
they cursed. When they were silent
they were making noise. At 6 a.m. I could think
of a few freedoms I wished to curtail.
But of course they worked with what wouldn't
easily yield. They had to cut and break

before they could make anything whole.
I should have been all sympathy,
I who'd recently torn apart a marriage,
discovered what was and wasn't there.
In a few weeks the walkway was finished.
They were out of my life, gone.

Sometime solid remained, and the mountains
seemed to collect around us,
seemed even to redefine the sky,
but not for long. In this foreignness
I recognized an elsewhere
I carried with me, no one's fault.

Yet my love had a way of finding me
wherever I was. And soon I'd meet a man
whose decline in tennis matched mine,
and another I knew would be a friend
after I saw the stunning useless art he made
out of metal, discarded things.



"The Kiss"

She pressed her lips to mind.
--a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone's lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she's missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek's ear,
speaking sense. It's the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

[Reem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is one of my favouites from this collection...

"The Lost Thing

The truth is
it never belonged to anybody.
It’s not a music box or a locket;
it doesn’t bear our initials.
It has none of the tragic glamour
of a lost child, won’t be found
on any front page. It’s like
the river that confuses
search dogs, like the promise
on the far side of the ellipsis.
Look for it in the margins,
is the conventional wisdom.
Look for it as late afternoon light
drips below the horizon.
But it’s not to be seen.
Nor does it have a heart
or give off any signal.
It’s as if. . . is how some of us
keep trying to reach it.
Once, long ago, I felt sure
I was in its vicinity."

[Rebekah Zhao · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, it's Stephen Dunn. He's a brilliant poet, in part because his poetry is so accessible and yet can lend itself to multiple interpretations. However, I'm docking a star because the first time I opened Different Hours and read one of the poems within, it captivated me instantly and moved something deep in my soul.
There's only a couple poems in Everything Else in the World that felt close to that level of impact, "Process" being the first that comes to mind, "My Ghost" being another. Others are just sweet little poems that speak very plainly to universal experiences, like "Critic" and "Lucky." Some are just meh.
But he always always has a lovely way with words.

[Tracy Marks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Dunn's Visitations collection of poetry - having first read his magnificent poem Crossings - I marked about 15 of his poems I loved. So I was looking forward to reading more of his books. In this one, however, there was only one poem that strongly appealed to me, and not as much as any of my favorites in the other book. So though I recommend everyone read Stephen Dunn's highly accessible poetry, I don't particularly recommend this collection.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm no poet, not even an aficionado, but I do like it. It grew on me thanks to the Irish poets Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland (read in an Irish lit class at university). Thanks also go to scattered Plath and Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins that I've picked up, as well as anything The Bard created.

Stephen Dunn arrives in my life due to a friend (hi, ARose) imposing him on it. (Postcards, and poems scrawled on them, can do so much.) I read an interview with Dunn at Books & Culture (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2...) that I really liked, and thus I gave him a go.

Everything Else In The World is Dunn's latest, although his best is probably the Pulitzer-tapped Different Hours, which I'll read next. The poems are alternately solemn and light, grave and fun, and they have the motif running through them of coping with the realities of this "already brutal century" at hand for us. I can't say much was memorable, but it often made for pleasant reading in the moment. With hope, his Different Hours harbors more crisp pieces, and if I don't find better stuff there, I'll stick to reading the poet Mary Karr's bookography (she's my latest find), as well as everything from Hopkins.

[Joe Haack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dunn is my favorite living poet (what does that say about me?). This book does not disappoint. It has a Solomonic tone: exploring this vaporous world of big and little wrongs, loves, and realizations.

Interesting interview quip below gives insight into his craft:

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do your poems come easily? Do they start with an image or a word or an idea?

STEPHEN DUNN: All of the above. They start variously. I usually have no particular design in mind when I begin. But, yes, sometimes with an idea, sometimes with an image, and my habit of mind is to resist what I find myself saying. So often a poem progresses by a series of resistances, where I might say something... My habit of mind is every time I say something, I almost always hear its opposite. And I think my poems progress... often progress that way, where an idea or a notion is refined as I move down the page.

(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/...)

[Meen]

Thanks, Ginnie, for turning me on to your daily WOW!:

The Kiss
by Stephen Dunn


She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were to just rate the third and final section of this collection, it would be 5 stars. Hands down. I loved it. Summer Nocturne, The Slow Surge, Cardinal Cardinal... All but one of the poems I loved are in that final section. (What I Might Say If I Could is the lone favorite from earlier in the book.)

I would say that I have become a fan of Dunn's work and that section reminds me of why I love his word-workings. Unfortunately, I felt that much of the book up to that point was uninspired compared to his other work. Another reviewer here said something about this being a poet on auto-pilot and I can't say that I could completely disagree. It's not that I hated the first 2/3 of this book. It's just simply that it didn't feel particularly memorable to me. That is something I have not said about most Dunn that I have read.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this collection, it did not pack the same punch that previous Stephen Dunn books. Only two poems grabbed me--one called "Lucky" (meditations on lessons from recess) and "Moonrakers" (a take on the historical moonrakers of Wiltshire). I think the main reason why I didn't connect with this collection is that it seemed far too personal for my taste. Also, Dunn can't seem to help himself from discussing religion (or lack thereof) in many of his poems, which bogs the poems down for me.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

coincidentally I found this in a thrift store just days after finishing Different Hours. I enjoyed Dunn's Pulitzer Prize winning collection so much I bought this one, which, though not as good as Different Hours, was well worth the dollar I spent on it. I read this one a few poems a night with my wife, and we both enjoyed it very much.

[Chris]

Phenomenal poems. "A Small Part" alone is a revelation. Dunn is probably our best contemporary poet. I honestly can't think of anyone better.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit and miss. Very short book. Large type, lots of white page. Could be read in a brief sitting. $25? Jeez.