What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009
by Stephen Dunn
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Brilliant new poems and an expansive gathering from six collections by a Pulitzer Prize winner celebrated as "indispensable." "Good poems are triumphs over the unlikely," Stephen Dunn says. "They make us pay attention in new ways." In his second new and selected collection, Dunn subtly enlarges our sense of possibility.Tags
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Member Reviews
I love it when a poet can tell a story. He had me with the first poem, "Tucson," from the opening lines:
A man was dancing with the wrong woman
in the wrong bar, the wrong part of town.
to the middle lines:
I'd forgotten
how fragile the face is, how fists too
are just so many small bones.
to the close:
My friend said nothing's wrong, stay put,
it's a good fighting bar, you won't get hurt
unless you need to get hurt.
Another poem has a dead-on analysis is the Olympic skaters Tonya and Nancy:
One woman has nothing out of place
as she slides into our living rooms.
The other can't control her face.
In a prose poem he captures the high school reunion:
So interesting to see how character can overcome bone structure. Pretty, handsome, cute—how those show more attributes, those intimidations, once seemed permanent. No need to mark the many ways faces go bad. Or the sadness, for example, of remaining cute.
He writes of a woman with cancer:
we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,
offer a little toast to what goes on.
or he observes the sexual act:
perhaps the beautiful accident
of her bra commingling with your sock on a bedpost,
and just a stain or two to prove nothing like this
could ever be immaculate, Jesus Christ having come
involuntarily from your lips,
or the transformation of New Jersey:
When it became clear aliens were working here
with their dead-giveaway, perfectly cut Armani suits,
excessive politeness, and those ray guns
disguised as cell phones tucked into their belts,
I decided we had two choices: cocktail party
to befriend them, or massive air strikes...
As a college graduate he searches for a job:
History major? the interviewer said, I think
you might be good at designing brochures.
I was. Which filled me with desire
for almost everything else in the world.
He writes of Glenn Gould phoning Barbra Streisand at 3 a.m., or of Jeanne Moreau calling Glenn Gould. He conducts an autopsy of Alan Ginsberg's dying words. He contemplates the love life of mermaids.
I could go on. When he's good, he's really good. show less
A man was dancing with the wrong woman
in the wrong bar, the wrong part of town.
to the middle lines:
I'd forgotten
how fragile the face is, how fists too
are just so many small bones.
to the close:
My friend said nothing's wrong, stay put,
it's a good fighting bar, you won't get hurt
unless you need to get hurt.
Another poem has a dead-on analysis is the Olympic skaters Tonya and Nancy:
One woman has nothing out of place
as she slides into our living rooms.
The other can't control her face.
In a prose poem he captures the high school reunion:
So interesting to see how character can overcome bone structure. Pretty, handsome, cute—how those show more attributes, those intimidations, once seemed permanent. No need to mark the many ways faces go bad. Or the sadness, for example, of remaining cute.
He writes of a woman with cancer:
we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,
offer a little toast to what goes on.
or he observes the sexual act:
perhaps the beautiful accident
of her bra commingling with your sock on a bedpost,
and just a stain or two to prove nothing like this
could ever be immaculate, Jesus Christ having come
involuntarily from your lips,
or the transformation of New Jersey:
When it became clear aliens were working here
with their dead-giveaway, perfectly cut Armani suits,
excessive politeness, and those ray guns
disguised as cell phones tucked into their belts,
I decided we had two choices: cocktail party
to befriend them, or massive air strikes...
As a college graduate he searches for a job:
History major? the interviewer said, I think
you might be good at designing brochures.
I was. Which filled me with desire
for almost everything else in the world.
He writes of Glenn Gould phoning Barbra Streisand at 3 a.m., or of Jeanne Moreau calling Glenn Gould. He conducts an autopsy of Alan Ginsberg's dying words. He contemplates the love life of mermaids.
I could go on. When he's good, he's really good. show less
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2008-2012 Notable Books for Adults
127 works; 10 members
Author Information
30+ Works 1,314 Members
Stephen Dunn (1939-2021) was the author of nineteen poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, American Poetry Review, and many other publications. He was a distinguished professor emeritus at Richard Stockton University and received an Academy Award for show more Literature, among other honors. show less
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