Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H.… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
“He held her like a new woman and what she felt felt almost as good as love had, and each of them called it love because precision didn’t matter anymore.” — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
The world is always somewhat vicious. I take that as a given, but at various times in various circumstances that fact will be no more than a shadow or an echo behind some poem. Other times it will be more manifest. I try to write myself into articulations of half-felt, half-known feelings, without program. I'm always working toward getting my… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure on the imagination." Inevitably what is omnipresent in the culture exerts its pressure on our imaginations to respond to it, even if indirectly. But in this case the backdrop of 9/11,… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C… The often… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
“God knows nothing we don't know. We gave him every word he ever said.” — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one's smallness in the world. — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
“That time I thought I was in love and calmly said so was not much different from the time I was truly in love and slept poorly and spoke out loud to the wall and discovered the hidden genius of my hands And the times I felt less in love, less than someone, were, to be honest, not so different… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
“I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share
There's a certain pleasure in violating the strictures of your education. The trick is, if you're going to explore ideas in a poem, to… — Stephen Dunn Copy Share Image
