Reviewing Stephen Dunn's 'The Insistence of Beauty'

Stephen Dunn's latest book of poetry, "The Insistence of Beauty," is split into three sections: the Dull, the Brief, and the Overly Philosophical. These are my own classifications, but I find them more useful than Dunn's I, II, and III.

The Dull stagnates immediately with "Turning to the Page," the first poem in this collection; the prosaic syntax makes the poem starkly unmusical, and diminishes any expectations for song that I had when picking up this book. The poem brims with words like 'intimacy,' 'silence,' 'language,' phrases like "[being] my own disappointment," "simultaneously assert and hide," stale bits that sound like they've been garnered from the notebooks left over after a self-help author publishes a new book. A trend carries into many of the remaining poems in this section, that when they sound good, the music is isolated to a turned phrase, paired sounds, small tonal victories that are scattered too thinly to satisfy. I'll concede, however, that the sublime ending of "For Many Years" breaks this trend: "The dog would awaken and bark./ And the story of how I got lost/ in the navigable dark/ each time needed to feel true." Too little, too late, I say - I was still reeling from the kindergarten rhythms of "From the Garden" a few pages earlier, with its description of flower shadows as "a bunch of gray guys on a cold, gray day." You can't find cheese like that in a dairy.

It is sad that this first section disappoints so thoroughly, as I almost glossed over the Brief, the one-poem section that highlights this book. As immediately stagnant as the Dull is, the Brief is as immediately compelling: "Last night a succubus-bitten moon followed me all the way home," starts the poem "Another Day," moving on to tell the story of Dunn's friendship with a philosopher, and his newfound focus on the 'larger' questions in life, rather than the details that ordinarily occupy a poet's attentions. "I wasn't thinking of... mustangs/ in Wyoming snorting in a canyon after a long run... but of someone religious who's never had a crisis/ of faith, and therefore can't be trusted." This admission appears, sudden and stunning, to try to justify Dunn's new grand perspective and concerns, which is a relevant concern at this point in the collection, because "Another Day" segues into its third, Overly Philosophical section.

Calling the section overly philosophical is by no means a sweeping dismissal of the poems therein. Dunn's writing experience (this is his thirteenth collection) is apparent in the shape of each poem, the subtle evidence in each narrative's start that proves a later claim. A pattern emerges, where many of the poems feel incohesive until a clarifying distinction comes in in a quick phrase. "Something Loveless Out There" hinges on the poem's final line ("in silence, not awe,/ ... [we gave the lightning] nothing more than respect") to show that the poem is about the difference between silence and awe, the attitudes of people silent or awed, and, ultimately, the lack of fear in the narrator.

In "Beliefs," Dunn poses a question that typifies the problems of the last section of the collection; "Is it possible," he asks, "to be in love/ and wise at the same time?" Such concerns are well within the domain of the poet, but my general aesthetic sense is that such a question should never be written in a poem, should always be within it or behind it. Such blatant presentation of an author's anxieties diminishes the joy of analyzing literature, the tactful inaccessibility of the author that makes the reader want to probe the text more and more. The music is present in these last poems, and the truth surfaces occasionally, but the alluring sense of mystery is absent.