Quotes by Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn

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, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm… all of those were forces informing the poems in some way.

Breakup

Reality

Taken

A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one’s smallness in the world.

Acceptance

Moments

World

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

Confession

Style

World

All good poems are victories over something.

Victory

Although I know it’s unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

Knows

Mask

Unfair

Altruism is for those who can’t endure their desires. There’s a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It’s where we could live. 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 disappoint you better than anyone else has. –Mon Semblable

Disappointment

Love You

Thinking

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.

Insufficient

Like Love

Lovely

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

Answers

Links

Purpose

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you’ve been alive.

Alive

Proof

Said

Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I’ve mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.

Order

Patterns

Way

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Abstract

Abstraction

Acceptance

Ache

Alive

Animal

Answers

Astonishment

Basketball

Becoming

Body

Breakup

Concern

Confession

Culture

Curious

Deny

Desire

Dirty

Disappoint

Disappointment

Discovery

Done

Elegance

Events

Exercise

Feelings

Has Beens

Heart

Hearted

I Can

Identity

Insufficient

Juicy

Kind

Knows

Left

Like Love

Links

Littles

Love You

Lovely

Lying

Mask

Mind

Moments

Mouths

Music

Order

Originality

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Quotes by Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn

A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one’s smallness in the world.

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

All good poems are victories over something.

Although I know it’s unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you’ve been alive.

Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I’ve mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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