Loosestrife

by Stephen Dunn

"Dunn's new poems are driven by the same tireless force that made his New and Selected Poems (1994) so powerful, but there is a new tone here, a deepening of his recognition of life's perversities."― Booklist In this tenth collection, Stephen Dunn turns his "wise, well-practiced eye" ( Library Journal ) on an America growing ever more stringent with its daily mercies. Not content merely to observe the world, Dunn's stance is always dual, complicit. And as he navigates through each paradox of his moral and aesthetic and erotic selves, this poet, described by Sydney Lea as one "who remains open to contradictions," travels to a place of exact and complicated vision.

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

It always makes a difference
how one ends, aren’t endings where you
shut but don’t lock the door?

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How about this excellent example of a poem about a common topic in poetry: a sunrise:

RADICAL
by Stephen Dunn

So what if the world's indifferent
spin and tick was a given?
I thought I'd watch the sun climb
the far edge of the ocean,
see if I could break the mindless day
cleanly, my terms, what the hell.

I arrived in the star-filled dark,
found myself remembering
the first time I woke,
astonished,
next to someone beautiful.

Always I wanted to save
the word magnificent
for something like that,
for what truly lifts the ceiling.

I sat crosslegged on the sand
in the changing dark.
It announced itself in pink
long before its coming.
Such impertinence, I thought,
like a kid who's just set fire
to his report card, his shame,
outside his teacher's window.

Such brilliance.

Then the gulls began quarrelling
as if what was happening
could be a matter of opinion,
but they were merely experts,
there every morning, not to be trusted.

[Texx Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rank poets by favorites but sometimes they are 1A 1B 1C. Sephen Dunn is one of my favorite poets. In this collection (I wish I had the book with me right now) there is a poem about how suffering and misery are no problem to people who's lives are easy and their homes are calm. He goes on to honor those with difficult lives. That's all of us, I imagine. One after another I read his work and pause to say, "Yeah, I feel that way." "Yes this is how it happens."

[Caitlin]

"Maybe from the beginning
the issue was how to live
in a world so extravagant

it had a sky,
in bodies so breakable
we had to pray."

from "Ars Poetica"

[Stephen Lamb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curl up with yourselves, we hear

our cats say. Go hesitantly, but go
to others already warm.
Our cats like God have never spoken
a word that wasn’t ours.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Phillies, Forsythe, and Atlantic City; what's not to love?

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Contained many snippets I enjoyed, but very few entire poems I enjoyed

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written 11 August 2007.

When I wrote about my graduation ceremonies last March, I said that it was both awkward and perfect. My heels have already killed me even before the march has started. We all just died of the heat. I took my Alumni oath barefoot, and teared up a little, in spite of myself, when it was all over. I was sad because I wanted some people to be there, I was happy because it's over, for fuck's sake, oh, four years.

There were gimmicks up the stage and it was amusing to watch the deans struggle to keep their cool: those who curtsied, those who raised their fists in the air, those who wore lipstick but were undoubtedly not women, those who proudly declared six years of studying, those who made the Star Trek hand signal thing, those who went down the center stage instead of exiting to the left. The valedictorian speech bored the hell out of me, I still wished it was someone different. The inspirational speaker bored the hell out of everyone. Conan O'Brien, still has the best commencement speech in the world. To boot, my grandparents were in the john when I went up the stage, my father slept through the first part of the ceremony, and the car overheated after graduation. But: I sang the school song with all my heart, surprisingly. I hugged my friends tight because it was important to share the moment. That waiter, Marcus, at CPK was the best waiter one could have. My favorite mentor called to say congratulations, even though I couldn't hear her voice.

The last four years flashed before me as I stood there with my fake diploma, how I changed and not changed, how the world still waited outside: I am still fat, I am still in love with Frank Sinatra, I am still stupid enough to miss someone I shouldn't, I still count steps and windows, I still tack pins on the world map hanging on the back of my bedroom door. And yet: I haven't smoked in two weeks, I no longer have a dog, I kind of listen to rock music once in a while, and I can finally win in a game of Hearts. Such accomplishments, really, deserve a few beer bottles.

But oh, but oh, what of the world outside. What of falling in line to do grown-up things? What of wanting to be yourself, but losing your choices? What then, what then. These thoughts course through my mind as we drive home, the lights passing over my face. Whenever a new world opens itself up to me, always, always I don't know whether I should just let go, or fall back.

So finally, to end this sap, a poem:

Tiger Face
Stephen Dunn

Because you can be what you're not
for only so long,
one day the tiger cub raised by goats

wandered to the lake and saw himself.
It was astounding
to have a face like that, cat-handsome,

hornless, and we can imagine he stared
a long time, then sipped
and pivoted, bemused yet burdened now

with choice. The mother goat had nursed him.
The others had tolerated
his silly quickness and claws.

And because once you know who you are
you need not rush,
and good parents are a blessing

whoever they are, he went back to them,
rubbing up against
their bony shins, keeping his secret to himself.

but after a while the tiger who'd found
his true face
felt the disturbing hungers, those desires

to get low in the reeds, swish his tail
charge.
Because he was a cat he disappeared

without goodbyes, his goat-parents relieved
such a thing was gone.
And we can imagine how, alone and beyond

choice, he wholly became who he was---
that zebra or gazelle
stirring the great blood rush and odd calm

as he discovered, while moving, what needed
to be done.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection, much of it about loneliness, came to me at a particularly lonely time in my life. It became a good friend.

[Malcolm Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another reason why Dunn is as good as it gets!!

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Dunn--some poems were BEAUTIFUL and some didn't move me very much. So it goes.

[carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so glad someone gave this book to me because I would hate to think that I actually went out and bought it on my own. Especially after reading it. I liked maybe one poem out of the whole book.

[Chris]

Not bad, not great. "Everything Else in the World" is a better collection by Dunn.

[Sami Al-Khalili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let Dunn's 10 collection fool you that quantity will outshine his quality. This should be on your bookshelf. As an aspiring poet, his style of writing is so good and so useful to analyze.

[Я. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect. My favorite collection by Dunn yet.

[Margaret Adams]

This was my first time reading Stephen Dunn. I was lucky enough to be able to read most of this volume over the course of a few days of sunny lunch breaks, my first ones after a long, particularly rainy Seattle winter. The first poem in this collection, "Solving the Puzzle," set the tone for the whole collection: I read it five or six times and still couldn't decide if it was hopeful or heartbreaking. Both, I decided. Most of the poems that followed embraced that same duality.