In this meditative and incisive collection, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn draws on themes of morality and mortality to explore the innermost machinations of human nature. Shifting in tone but never wavering in their essential honesty, these poems reflect on desire, restraint and the roles we play in an ever-evolving society. A stunning sequence on the relationship between the speaker and Mrs. Cavendish examines an intimacy sustained and repelled by politics, philosophy and attraction.
Wide-ranging, intellectually daring and wry, Pagan Virtues reminds us of Dunn's penetrating eye for the universal and the specific, and his ability to highlight our contradictions with tenderness and wit.
Stephen Dunn (1939-2021) was the author of twenty poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours. He was a distinguished professor emeritus at Richard Stockton University. Over his six-decade career, he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, among many other honors.
Title: Pagan Virtues: Poems
Author: Dunn, Stephen
ISBN: 9780393868449
Binding:
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Publication Date: 2022-01-11
Number of Pages: 112
Weight: 0.1000 kg
With these wise, late-life poems, Stephen Dunn has given us a new collection that shows us how 'loving / is an achievement, a constancy of renewal.' -- Margaret Gibson, author of Broken Cup
For intelligence, soul, wit, honesty, and courage, so many of us cherish the work of Stephen Dunn. In our ruined nation and on our dying planet, we need his poems more than ever. -- David Huddle, author of Dream Sender
Pagan Virtues is Stephen Dunn at his best-and Dunn's best is about as good as it gets. -- -David Wojahn, author of Interrogation Palace
Over a rich, long career dedicated to poetry, one of Dunn's greatest honesties has been in refusing to look away from our dishonesties-both personal and political-and his new book is another wise study in the truths and half-truths we present to the world. -- Albert Goldbarth, author of The Kitchen Sink
