Not Dancing

by Stephen Dunn

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

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

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I'm trying to go chronologically through Dunn's books, and I find this is where he really hit his stride, where his explorations of the human moments a little less forced in terms of finding their philosophy of the immediate and lustful. Previous books seemed to work a little hard in their contrariness and so ended up caged into that realm, but here, Dunn finds the "thin line between corner/and cornered," and thus finds the way to keep on both sides of that little fence. There are poems in here that, for good reason, have been anthologized and selected elsewhere, where Dunn as a poet is generous "for other reasons," and creates the poet that is delightfully self-serving.