Naming the Stars: Poems

by Joyce Sutphen

Many of the poems in Naming the Stars are about the difficulty of balancing the desires of one self with those of another and the problem of solving the arguments between the body and the soul. The collection's perspective often shifts as the poet wonders how to tell a story that she is not certain she understands even as she lives it, but she finds solace in the sonnet and near-sonnet, giving the volume a recurring shape and a sequential thread. This is Sutphen's third book of poems and it is a change, both in style and subject matter: the poems here are more immediate and revealing emotionally, and the language (lean and complex) matches this intensity.

Naming the Stars

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

Joyce Sutphen's first book of poetry, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women's Poets Prize (Beacon Press, 1995) and was recently republished by Holy Cow! Press (2001). Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. She has read her work on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion. Ms. Sutphen's awards include the Eunice Tietjen's Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine, a Loft-McKnight Artist Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and grants from the Jerome Foundation. She holds a Ph.D in Renaissance Drama and teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Joyce Sutphen (born 1949) is an American poet, currently serving as Minnesota's Poet Laureate. She is the state's second laureate, appointed by Governor Mark Dayton in August, 2011. Sutphen also serves as a professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 5 ⭐️s are for section IV.

[John Wojtowicz · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's some nice sonnets and some of the endings really land but 50+ poems about the end of a relationship that the reader was never anchored in was a bit of a trudge.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed other Sutphen collections more than this one, which seems to mainly meditate on the loss of a marriage. I found it be a little too repetitive for my taste, but there were still some standouts:

Polaroid #2
What the Elders Taught Us
Now That Anything Could Happen

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Joyce Stuphen's poetry several years ago. I like her style of blending deep, personally painful experiences (i.e., divorce and separation) with insights gained, questions raised about what it means to take a risk, plunge in and then have our hearts broken, and yet rise from the ashes of brokenness and find our way forward, taking that next step. I appreciate her insights and observations which helped me process some of my own experiences. One of my favorite poems in this collection is called "Advice and Content" -

Pay attention to what you pay
attention to, or what - perhaps
as now - you do not give a fig for.

There are things that I would die
(and will, I suppose) to know; there
are things I will not sit still to learn.

When your mind wanders, wonder
what that means, meaning where is it
you visit instead of where you were

just then before you went astray?
Afterwards, when It's over, if ever
it is, think about how you started and

start to pick up pieces of yourself,
paying attention to each glittering shard,
remembering yourself into place.

(Joyce Stuphen, Naming the Stars: Poems by Joyce Stuphen, Duluth, Minn: Holy Cow Press, 2004, p.54)