Only Bread Only Light

by Kuusisto, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781556591501
• ISBN10: 1556591500
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr

Summary

With this, his first collection of poetry, Stephen Kuusisto (author of the memoir Planet of the Blind) explores blindness and curiosity, loneliness and the found instruments of continuation. Exploiting the seeming contradiction of poetry's reliance upon visual imagery with Kuusisto's own sightlessness, these poems cultivate a world of listening: to the natural world, to the voices of family and strangers, to music and the words of great writers and thinkers. Kuusisto has written elsewhere, "I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope; my impressions of the world at once beautiful and largely useless." So it is no surprise that in his poems mortal vision is uncertain, supported only by the ardor of imagination and the grace of lyric surprise. Sensually rich and detailed, Kuusisto's poems are humorous, complex, and intellectually engaged. This collection reveals a major new poetic talent. "Only Bread, Only Light" At times the blind see light, And that moment is the Sistine ceiling, Grace among buildings-no one asks For it, no one asks. After all, this is solitude, Daylight's finger, Blake's angel Parting willow leaves. I should know better. Get with the business Of walking the lovely, satisfied, Indifferent weather- Bread baking On Arthur Avenue This first warm day of June. I stand on the corner For priceless seconds. Now everything to me falls shadow Stephen Kuusisto's 1998 memoir Planet of the Blind received tremendous international attention, including appearances on Oprah, Dateline, and Talk of the Nation. The New York Times named it a "Notable Book of the Year" and praised it as "a book that makes the reader understand the terrifying experience of blindness, a book that stands on its own as the lyrical memoir of a poet." A spokesperson for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Kuusisto teaches at Ohio State University.

Author Biography

Stephen Kuusisto is a spokesperson for Guiding Eyes for the Blind and teaches creative writing at Ohio State University

Table of Contents

One
Blind Days in Early Youth	5	(3)
Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine	8	(2)
Accomplice	10	(1)
Guess	11	(1)
Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille	12	(3)
Serenade	15	(2)
At the Woods' Edge	17	(2)
Diagram	19	(1)
Guiding Eyes	20	(2)
Only Bread, Only Light	22	(3)
Two
Still	25	(1)
Drink	26	(2)
Post-Orphic	28	(1)
Summer at North Farm	29	(1)
Helsinki, 1958	30	(2)
Facing the Trees	32	(3)
In the Attic	35	(1)
Praise for the Yiddish Poets	36	(1)
Lying Still	37	(2)
Competing Interests within the Family: 1909	39	(1)
At the Summer House	40	(1)
First Things	41	(1)
Waiting	42	(5)
Three
Deus Faber	47	(3)
Tourists	50	(2)
Sheraton, Chicago, Three A.M.	52	(2)
In Our Time	54	(2)
Mandelstam	56	(1)
Tenth Muse	57	(1)
The Approximate Hour	58	(1)
Allegro	59	(1)
Prism	60	(2)
Knossos	62	(1)
The Invention of the Wolf	63	(2)
Open Window	65	(2)
King of the Crickets	67	(2)
Breton-esque	69	(1)
Rachmaninoff's Curtains	70	(1)
Running to the Wood	71	(1)
Viaticum	72	(1)
Essay on November	73	(1)
Mnemosyne	74	(1)
``Revolution by Night''	75	(2)
Descant on Climbing and Descending Stairs	77	(4)
The Sleep I Didn't Sleep	81	(1)
``Talking Books''	82	(2)
Elegy for Ted Berrigan	84	(2)
Ode to Ogden Nash	86	(2)
Ode to My Sleeping Pills	88	(1)
The Mockingbird on Central	89	(1)
Corazon, Corazon	90	(5)
Four
Seven Prayers	95	(7)
Night Seasons	102	(2)
About the Author	104

Excerpts

Chapter One

Blind Days in Early Youth

No Name for It

Start with a hyphenated word, something Swedish --

Rus-blind; "blind drunk"; blinda-fläcken; "blind spot";

Blind-pipa; "nonentity," "a type of ghost."

En blind höna hittar också ett korn;

"The fool's arrow sometimes hits the mark."

(That's what the Swedish matron said

When I was a boy climbing stairs.)

She pointed with a cane: Tsk tsk,

Barna-blind; "blind child."

Her tone mixed piety and reproof -- pure Strindberg!

It echoed on the stairs, barna-blind --

"Blind from birth." En blind höna hittar ...

The blind child's arrow ...

Terra Incognita

When I walked in the yard

Before sunrise,

I made my way among patches of dew --

Those constellations on the darkened grass.

The webs drifted like anemones,

And I thought of lifting them

As if they were skeins of brilliant yarn

That I could give to my mother

Who'd keep them

Until we knew what to make.

I pictured a shirt --

How I'd pull it over my head

And vanish in the sudden light.

Awake All Night

The cabinet radio glowed

With its lighted dial

As I pressed my face to the glass.

My spectacles, thick as dishes,

Were kaleidoscopes of light,

So I'd lean close

To make out numbers,

And the brilliant city of tubes

Just visible through a crevice.

I never heard the music

As I traced those lamp-lit houses

Like a sleepy, mindful ghost

Who looks down out of habit

At the vivid world.

Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine

The dry universe

Gives up its fruit,

Black seeds are raining,

Pascal dreams of a wristwatch,

And heaven help me

The metempsychosis of book

Is upon me. I hunch over it,

The boy in the asylum

Whose fingers leapt for words.

(In the dark books are living things,

Quiescent as cats.)

Each time we lift them

We feel again

The ache of amazement

Under summer stars.

It's a dread thing

To be lonely

Without reason.

My window stays open

And I study late

As quick, musical laughter

Rises from the street

And I rub grains of the moon

In my hands.

Accomplice

It was in the nature of things

That I couldn't see. The nature of things

That the magpie should watch me.

Perpetual strangers

Touch my sleeves,

The steel light of August

Draws me, affirming

Over brilliant and terrible streets,

And the bird looks on --

You'd swear

He's like those wounded gentlemen

From the First World War,

Watchful, innocent,

Hoarding his words

In case someone is lost.

Guess

Because waking, the radio low,

I've heard music by unnamed composers,

The puzzle of melody returns me

To the viola, Kol Nidrei ,

Or the oldest songs of the Finns.

The fields are swept by a music

Half-heard when rising,

No sound, blue intervals,

Then the next phrase

While rain streaks the windows

And the vibrato of recurrent wind

Tells of the waning moon

And Mendelssohn's fiddle.

It's a private, chalked-out game

As December collects and snow begins.

All morning I carry other people's words,

Advance the clock, talk through habit,

But early, the music lets me stand --

Freed from opinion into guess,

A place I need as some need ends.

I walk between pillars of silk,

Hear the rhapsody of Solomon.

The Hebraic dawn opens again,

A windfall, and I hesitate.

Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille

Each morning

I live with less color:

The lawn turns gray,

The great laurel is gravid

With flint -- as if it might burn

In the next life.

Even the persimmon tree

Is clear as a wineglass stem.

In Paradiso

A river of hosts

Opens to the poet

Who begs and prays

For an illumined soul.

And I saw light

That took a river's form --

Light flashing,

Reddish-gold,

Between two banks

Painted with wonderful

Spring flowerings....

Finger reading,

A tempered exercise,

I notice how dark

The window has become

Though it's noon

And August

And daylight still resists winter.

I bow my head,

Return to the book.

Poor poet,

He hurries to the river,

And into the river,

His eyes as wide

As a man can make them.

The long sunlight of late summer

Floods the rhododendrons --

This is the light

That pulls him

Under the stream,

Hands, lips, fingers, opening ...

The river

And the gems

Of topaz

Entering and leaving,

And the grasses' laughter --

These are shadows,

Prefaces of their truth....

I strain for color,

The preclusion of sight,

And put aside the book,

Paradiso in braille.

Who the hell is this

Turning again to the window,

His fingers reaching the sill,

Hands still touching

A river that no one can see?

Copyright © 2000 Stephen Kuusisto. All rights reserved.