Home > Work > New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994
1 " Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body. "
― Stephen Dunn , New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994
2 " May you turnstone, my daughter,into silk. May you make men better than they are. "
3 " I am astonishedby the various kisses we’re capable of.Each from different heightsdiminished, which is simply the law.And the big bruisefrom the long fall looked perfectly whitein a few years.That astounded me most of all. "
4 " and in the gifted air mosquitoes, dragonflies, and tattered mute angels no one has called upon in years. "
5 " I love abstractions, I love to give them a nouny place to live, a firm seat in the balcony of ideas, while music plays. "
6 " I’ve pursued things long after they were over. Always I wanted someone to stop me. "
7 " Isn’t joy a kind of stillness at the top of something, before the long falling? "
8 " One day he just found himself opening the door, allowing the inevitable. The world came in and filled the room. It seemed so familiar with everything. "
9 " And I’ve turned corners there was no going back to, corners in the middle of a room that led to Spain or solitude. And always the thin line between corner and cornered, the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies that permit no repose, the places we retreat to, the places we can’t bear to be found. "
10 " so many people walk up to me and tell me they’re dead, though they’re just describing their afternoons. "
11 " Those of us who think we know"Those of us who think we knowthe same secretsare silent together most of the time,for us there is eloquencein desire, and for a whilewhen in love and exhaustedit’s enough to nod like shy horsesand come togetherin a quiet ceremony of tongues. It’s in disappointment we look for wordsto convince usthe spaces between stars are nothingto worry about;it’s when those secrets burstin that emptiness between our heartsand the lumps in our throats.And the words we findare always insufficient, like love,though they are often lovelyand all we have. "