Customer Reviews

Different Hours: Poems

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For a couple of decades Stephen Dunn's poems have been a source of insight and solace best described by the title of one of his books, "Local Time."

His focus is often the complex and absorbing relationships between lovers, family members, friends, opponents - how art/nature are both incidental and intrinsic to the lives we lead.

This book is a masterful rendering of time - imagined and compelling in each gesture. To read "Different Hours" as philosophy is to miss the artful storytelling. And yet it is not without a subtle nod to philosophy with its tough-minded admissions, its gentle refusals.

Like the great Stanley Kunitz, Dunn's music is pianissimo, say along the lines of an astringent Schumann opus - a pared-down Scriabin etude.

Read the book for its many rewards. It is simply exquisite.

Few poets achieve such a plainspoken poignancy as Mr. Dunn. I think of Cavafy, C.K. Williams, Philip Larkin, Horace -- masters of the craft gifted with the knack for discovering scraps of truth within the simplest words. "You might as well be a clown/big silly clothes, no evidence of desire," Dunn suggests in the book's opening poem. This is the language that gets you clawing through the pages to get to the lines that know you, that approve of some private cowardice or failure you wouldn't dare confess even to the closest friend.

But there is a kind of trust Dunn builds with the reader here, a wisdom so simple yet complicated enough that you could not quite have put your finger on it as quickly or accurately as he. I mean how his poems know that "as we fall in love/we are already falling out of it." How they resist self-pity in the face of fate: "Because in my family the heart goes first/and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties/I think I'll stay up late with a few bandits of my choice and resist good advice." It is the sort of statement that gets me flying out of my chair pumping my fist as though I'm cherring on the home team at a high school football game. I am happy for the speaker of these poems the way I was happy for Hulk Hogan as a kid. Dave Smith writes that Dunn may not be correct, but he is never wrong. Mr. Smith, himself a phenomenal and overlooked American poet, is exactly right: Dunn's voice is unafraid, skeptical, warm, consoling, bitter, celebratory and -- most of all -- accurate.

Books like "Different Hours" become "tombstones on our lives" as James Merrill says of love. I know that is true of my own experience with it. I was in a Virgin Records, still reeling from an atrocious break-up whose pain refused to leave me. The book collection upstairs was as miserable as I was at the moment; shelves so poorly stacked that it seemed the store was about to do away with selling books altogether. But then a dark and vibrant cover caught my eye; a book by someone named Stephen Dunn whom I had not only never heard of but who also happened to have won the Pulitzer. In the terrible frame of mine I was in that afternoon, I needed nothing more than to listen to what these poems had to say:

Those Trotskys of relationships,
perpetual revolution their motto,
their impatient hearts
dangerous to all that's complacent,

I understand them perfectly
and also why someone they've left behind
might travel all the way to Mexico
with a pickaxe to put an end to things.

Coming across these poems for the first time, it felt as though they were spoken from somewhere inside of me, scratched into my skin; lines that were extended hands strong enough to pull me out of the dark. If angels are not physical presences, then they are actions. They are moments like these in which you hear your name called from a poorly stocked bookshelf in a record store and stumble upon the road that takes you to who you are. Though I am no longer a captive of the bitter junkyard that was my heart at that time, I have never stopped enjoying these poems. I read over "Different Hours" as well as Dunn's "Loosestrife" and "Selected Poems" to this day. Taken as a whole, Dunn's work is one of the most reliable and compassionate friends I have ever had.

I first picked this book up before a class where we studied the Odyssey and while at the Columbia Bookstore I randomly opened the book up to 'Odysseus's Secret,' a poem that takes the Odysseus story and makes it applicable to the way with which we live our lives, moving with and dealing with the twists and turns that make us who we are. Suffice it to say after reading that I bought it immediately. After reading some of the other poems, most especially 'The Reverse Side,' I fell in love with this and can see why it was chosen to win the Pulitzer. The poetry uses such sparse language, yet conveys and addresses some of the major hurdles we deal with in life. I loved it and have placed it on my shelf next to some Yeats and Eliot.

I'm no poet, and I'm not about to wax poetic here, on Amazon.com. I simply enjoy reading good poetry. There are only a few of us. You know, the people who read but don't write poetry.

Different Hours is by far my favorite collection of poetry. I've read many of Dunn's other collections, and have not been as impressed. This has nothing to do with the little gold stamp on the corner of the cover, either. The poems are well-balanced, and make you feel like Dunn has revealed something about his subject that is just under the surface - whether it be aging, weather, or nostalgic memories. The feeling is similar to being around someone with a skill not your own, like playing basketball with someone who, unlike you, can dunk. Unlike myself, and many writers I've read, Dunn is skilled in explaining feelings and observations in ways that actually make you feel like you've learned something about yourself.

Quite simply, reading poems like Zero Hour, Dog Weather, and others, will cause you to experience the ordinary in a new way that is both foreign and addictive.

Stephen Dunn won the Pulitzer in 2001 for his collection of poetry, Different Hours. And unlike other Pulitzer winners (Carl Dennis' Practical Gods for example), this one might actually deserve the award. It is a pretty good collection. The poems are lyrical and interesting. Dunn isn't obsure. He doesn't ramble. It's a solid collection, with several really good poems ("Evanescence", "The Death of God", "Optimism", "John & Mary", "returning from an Artist's Studio", and "Story").

Needless to say this is the goal of a lifetime for modern poets; write a Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poems. For Dunn this is validation of a lifetime of effort; the ultimate credential in poetry. The wording and imagery is exquisite. Unfortunately, he like most poets is not well served by his art. His poetry offers little for those searching for the next step but he seems to say there is no next step. For Dunn the truth is bland, ordinary, and frightenly hopeless. Dunn suggests we are all heading towards an abysmal oblivion. Some say he has the courage to look at reality. I know him and I say he could use some prozac or a good dose of the real truth; the eternal peace within all of us. But hey, it's like finding a needle in a hey stack. Say hello Steve.
I will continue to hang out with Hafiz and Rumi. They are definitiely more fun. And besides, getting a hold on the "Beloved" is like grabbing a Grizzley Bear by the nuts and making love to a beautiful woman all at once.

Lovely collection of poems. Dunn has a wry wit, and it extremely enjoyable to read. I believe this book would please a great diversity of readers, both poetry enthusiasts and non-poetry enthusiasts.

I first came across Stephen Dunn's work in Contemporary American Poetry by A. Poulin, Jr. and Michael Waters (Eight Edition). I feel enjoyed the few poems included there and wanted to read more. Recommended from a friend, I purchased Different Hours by Stephen Dunn. I enjoyed almost every single one of his poems and read and re-read them over and over again. I loved how his poems at first seemed simple, but after reading them again and really analyzing them, they were really more complex than that. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to read stimulating and interesting poetry. Some of my favorites include, "John & Mary," "After," and "The Death of God."

Dunn's Different Hours is quite an accomplishment. Dunn focuses on the ordinary and on human relationships and uses wry humor, omission, nostalgia, and expertly controlled language to limn the ordinary into song, whether classical or from a jutebox. These subjects, in other hands, may fall flat, for Dunn does not elevate his experience into the sublime, or into the intellectual like C.K. Williams' Pulitzer-winner "Repair." Different Hours---a unique and mature book.

What a wonderfull book. I read this book twice and will read it again.His poetry settles in like a old friend. Read anything by Dunn that you can find.