Pagan Virtues: Poems

by Stephen Dunn

Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn returns with his signature morbid wit, intellectual daring, and emotive powers on full display. In this meditative and incisive collection, Stephen Dunn draws on themes of morality and mortality to explore the innermost machinations of human nature. Shifting in tone but never wavering in their essential honesty, these poems reflect on desire, restraint, and the roles we play in an ever-evolving society. In Pagan Virtues , Dunn reminds us of his penetrating eye for the universal and the specific, and his ability to highlight our contradictions with tenderness and wit. Two poems dedicated to Dunn’s eulogist, in advance, bookend the collection. The first introduces us to the poet’s sardonic candor and unflinching gaze at his own mortality, while the latter, written nineteen years later, reflects on what it means to continue to live in the “despoiled and radiant now.” A stunning sequence on the relationship between the speaker and “Mrs. Cavendish” examines an intimacy sustained and repelled by politics, philosophy, and attraction. Wry, observational, and wide-reaching, Pagan Virtues offers indispensable truths from a master of contemporary poetry.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

Published November 19, 2019

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

[Jennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every year I try another books of poems to only be reminded that I still don’t seem to understand poems.

[Steven Critelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another premier book of poetry from the old master, Stephen Dunn. No other poet has that secret sauce that distinguishes his work: the combination of wit, sagacity, tonal range, and accessibility, combined with an uncanny ability to get to the heart of things that matter. Besides the bookend elegies, "A Postmortem Guide" parts 1 and 2 [written in 1999 and 2018, respectively], there are many notable poems, particularly the eight-poem sequence, "The Woman in the Blue Dress," and the outstanding conclusion of twenty-five poems, "The Mrs. Cavrendish Poems," which anecdotally recount the friendship between the poet (or his alter ego) and a woman he had known and secretly desired all his life. These poems begin with "Rachel Becomes Mrs. Cavendish":

She moved into his name
willingly, for reasons phonetically
and otherwise obvious.
She especially liked that Cavendish
had a ring of entitlement to it
among bankers and brokers
in the New Jersey suburbs
where they moved to escape
her friends, and join his.
She was young, and had a sense
of what could be called WASP-y fun.
She'd never met anyone like him.
Both of them kept me off balance in those days.
When I'd visit I'd find myself half-beguiled,
half-annoyed, by how she'd tell lies
about things we'd experienced together.
But what could I do? She was in the act
of becoming Mrs. Cavendish, and I knew
from then on I'd keep her past
in the same closed-up closet
where I kept my own dark secrets.
In a way her husband and I became
keepers of her preferred memories.
He knew I loved her, but thought of me
as an adoring remnant, essentially prehistoric.
The truth is always different.

As might be inferred from the closing reprise of "A Postmortem Guide," Dunn has had Parkinson's Disease for more than two decades, and yet he defies the odds by continuing to craft poems that frequently appear in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Kenyon Review and other publications of the first order. Several years ago I saw him read at Syracuse University, after which he was interviewed by Mary Karr. Yes! Just as captivating as the conversation was the realization that the candor, naturalness, and wit of Dunn's poetry was clearly a feature of the man himself. [In 2018, Rattle published an interview by Timothy Green.] In other words, this time you can believe the blurbs.

[R.G. Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finishing reading Dunn's book this Thanksgiving makes me thankful to have the great man's voice still in print though it was silenced in reality. "A Post-mortem Guide (1) & (2)" are enough to take the breath away. Dunn's erudite wit and flat out humor--"Hope, and Other Four Letter Words" ends with the delightful "Hope it. Hope it all."--combine with elegiac musings in this collection of mostly wonderful late-career poems. The long narrative cycle "The Woman in the Blue Dress" didn't hold up to Dunn's usual standard for me, but the other narrative cycle "The Mrs. Cavendish Poems" drew me in to its world and its dramatis personae so reading it was like reading a play without scenes or acts. And is it just me or are these closing lines of "A Post-mortem Guide (1)" pure genius?:

"You who are one of them, say that I loved
my companions most of all.
In all sincerity, say that they provided
a better way to be alone."

[Adrian Neibauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Dunn came late to poetry. In interviews, he would say, "I grew up in a house without books and went to college on a basketball scholarship. I really didn’t discover poetry until I was out of school.” I empathize. I, too, came to books later in my life. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed this poetry collection. It is observational and unpretentious. I like Dunn's style: it is easygoing, almost folksy prose that discuss ordinary experiences. These poems are not simple; they are heavy with emotional complexity, sadness and humor. My favorite poems from this book: "A Postmortem Guide (1)", "A Postmortem Guide (2)", "An Education", "Pagan Virtues", and "The Woman in the Blue Dress."

[Lady Leigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

With a title being pagan virtues, I mistakenly expected a collection of poetry with some sort of divine gusto, or folkloric influence. But sadly I was met with poems primarily focusing on an aged gentleman hyper -focusing on shacking up with a grieving friend of his, who from the sounds of it, is contradictorily both the most interesting person the author has ever met, and also has lived a willfully dull life. If I wished to read poetry like that I'd listen to my friend ramble about her daddy issues and affinity of befriending terrible men just because they're old, alone, and need a shoulder to cry on.
No thanks.

[Andrew Chenevert · Rating 4 out of 5]

More Pulitzer Prize-winning poets should write poems about The Americans or other prestige dramas from the golden age of television. The second half of this book is devoted entirely to a lengthy sequence of interconnected narrative poems that don't quite hit me as hard as they themselves assert that they do, but I appreciate the book for what it is. Rich in ideas and vivid scenarios, though not particularly complex in its syntax or language.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Dunn comes out with a new book?
I buy it... sight unseen. And this one here,
just like all the others of his that I have,
did not disappoint. He's my very own
Poet Laureate. Period. Though...
I'm sure he could do better...

[Wilbur · Rating 5 out of 5]

“...the whole truth, as I’ve tried to say before, is nothing anyone has to know.”

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... I know quite well the follies
of the sensual are similar
to the follies of the logical,
and have learned to be wary of both."

p. 76

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-1/2 stars … especially loved the Mrs. Cavendish poems!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Mrs. Cavendish" poems stopped my breathing. And throughout, I felt a voice ready to be real. I could drink this all day.

[Theron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2

[Sophie N · Rating 4 out of 5]

another wonderful Stephen Dunn collection, though not my favorite of his. “The Undercover Man” and “Hope and other four-letter words” stood out to me.

[Charley Goodyear · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded from 3.5 stars.
I expected more naturey/pagan themed poems. Overall it was not a bad collection and I read it in one sitting, but it left me with no strong feelings either way.