Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.
I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has. - Stephen Dunn
I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.
- Stephen Dunn
Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another? - Stephen Dunn
Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another?
A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure o… - Stephen Dunn
A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure o…
I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent. - Stephen Dunn
I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.
What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C.... The often welcome melodic li… - Stephen Dunn
What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C.... The often welcome melodic li…
Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a cri… - Stephen Dunn
Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a cri…
I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth. - Stephen Dunn
I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth.
I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go furthe… - Stephen Dunn
I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go furthe…
Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can. - Stephen Dunn
Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can.
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