New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994 Quotes

“Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994

“May you turn
stone, my daughter,
into silk. May you make men better
than they are.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“I am astonished
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the long fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994

“I love abstractions, I love to give them a nouny place to live, a firm seat in the balcony of ideas, while music plays.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“and in the gifted air mosquitoes, dragonflies, and tattered mute angels no one has called upon in years.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“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.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“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.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“Isn’t joy a kind of stillness at the top of something, before the long falling?”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“I’ve pursued things long after they were over. Always I wanted someone to stop me.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“so many people walk up to me and tell me they’re dead, though they’re just describing their afternoons.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

“Those of us who think we know"

Those of us who think we know
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it’s enough to nod like shy horses
and come together
in a quiet ceremony of tongues.
It’s in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about;
it’s when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994