[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Stephen Dunn has died on his 82nd birthday. If you haven't read Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry, then I encourage you to do so.

Here's one of his poems.

Duncan

[Woody Long]

Thanks, Duncan.

Here's another of his poems. I admire the craft and the architecture.

— Woody

[John Isbell]

I leafed through Dunn's New and Selected Poems some years ago and promptly purchased the volume. I don't open it often, but he made an impact which these two posted poems confirm. Good craft. Good name for poetry as well. Thanks for posting, Duncan.

Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel" of course ends, "I don't think of you that often." But he wrote the song.

John

[Allen Tice]

I briefly had him as a one-day teacher at Breadloaf. I was callow, shallow, and an untoasted marshmallow. R. I. P.

[Roger Slater]

My first association with his name is this poem, which I think is one of his better known poems.

[Susan McLean]

I've been reading Dunn's work for years and have really enjoyed it. He taught at the same university I did, though many years before I got there, and he was good friends with my mentor Phil Dacey. Once, when he came to read at a literary festival at that university, I got to introduce him. I did not know him personally, but he was one of the free-verse poets that I consistently read.

Susan

[Jim Moonan]

.

The two poems posted here are the highlight of my day. If days had highlights. These two would be brightest of the bright.

Thanks for posting Duncan. Stephen Dunn, thank you, too.

.

[Coleman Glenn]

Thanks for mentioning this, Duncan. You’ve inspired me to go dig out my old copy of Different Hours, which might have been the first poetry collection I ever bought. I first discovered that I liked contemporary poetry when I stumbled across an issue of Poetry in my first year of college. I subscribed immediately, and the first issue I received was the 90th anniversary double issue that included a poem by Dunn (and which by some miracle I still have - see first photo). Based on that poem - and the fact that Barnes & Noble carried his Pulitzer-winning collection - I bought and devoured Different Hours shortly afterwards. The second photo here shows all the poems I dog-eared in the collection. My early obsession with poetry faded when I finished college, and when I came back to it last year I gravitated mostly to formalists. But I’m looking forward to diving back into Dunn. (Not sure if I’ve included photos correctly, or if that’s even possible.)

[Chris O'Carroll]

On his 82nd birthday? Yow! When I hit that age, somebody please remind me not to try blowing out all those candles.

This is the first Dunn poem that did a simultaneously-funny-and-serious number on me:

https://sisyphusunwound.com/?p=987