At the Restaurant, poem by Stephen Dunn

AT THE RESTAURANT
by Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people
and a public place the wrong place
for what you’re thinking–
 
stop this now.
 
Who do you think you are?
The duck à l’orange is spectacular,
the flan the best in town.
 
But there among your friends
is the unspoken, as ever,
chatter and gaiety its familiar song.
 
And there’s your chronic emptiness
spiraling upward in search of words
you’ll dare not say
 
without irony.
You should have stayed at home.
It’s part of the social contract
 
to seem to be where your body is,
and you’ve been elsewhere like this,
for Christ’s sake, countless times;
 
behave, feign.
 
Certainly you believe a part of decency
is to overlook, to let pass?
Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan’s
 
black dress, Paul’s promotion and raise.
Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.
Insufficient, the merely decent man.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in New York City in 1939, Stephen Dunn is the author of 15 collections of poetry, including DIFFERENT HOURS, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Dunn is the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College and lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, the writer Barbara Hurd.

Toward the Verrazano, poem by Stephen Dunn

TOWARD THE VERRAZANO
Poem by Stephen Dunn

Up from South Jersey and the low persistent
pines, pollution curls into the sky
like dark cast-off ribbons
and the part of us that’s pure camera,
that loves funnel clouds and blood
on a white dress, is satisfied.
At mile 127, no trace of a tree now,
nothing but concrete and high tension
wires, we hood toward to Outerbridge
past Arthur Kill Road where garbage trucks
work the largest landfill in the world.
The windscreens are littered, gorgeous
with rotogravure sections, torn love
letters mauve once-used tissues. The gulls
dip down like addicts, rise like angels.
Soon we’re in traffic, row houses, a college
we’ve never heard of stark as an asylum.
In the distance there it is, the crown
of this back way in, immense, silvery, 
and in no time we’re suspended
out over the Narrows by a logic linked
to faith, so accustomed to the miraculous
we hardly speak, and when we do
it’s with those words found on picture postcards
from polite friends with nothing to say. 

Photo: Arthur Kill Road, Staten Island, New York (1973), EPA Photo from National Archives.

At the Restaurant, poem by Stephen Dunn

AT THE RESTAURANT
by Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people
and a public place the wrong place
for what you’re thinking–
 
stop this now.
 
Who do you think you are?
The duck à l’orange is spectacular,
the flan the best in town.
 
But there among your friends
is the unspoken, as ever,
chatter and gaiety its familiar song.
 
And there’s your chronic emptiness
spiraling upward in search of words
you’ll dare not say
 
without irony.
You should have stayed at home.
It’s part of the social contract
 
to seem to be where your body is,
and you’ve been elsewhere like this,
for Christ’s sake, countless times;
 
behave, feign.
 
Certainly you believe a part of decency
is to overlook, to let pass?
Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan’s
 
black dress, Paul’s promotion and raise.
Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.
Insufficient, the merely decent man.
***
“At the Restaurant” appears in Stephen Dunn’s collection DIFFERENT HOURS, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The Sacred, poem by Stephen Dunn

THE SACRED
Poem by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
            a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank
 
in their chairs, the most serious of them all
            said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing
 
things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
            had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,
 
their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
            the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person
 
who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
            and how far away
a car could take him from the need
 
to speak, or to answer, the key
            in having a key
and putting it in, and going. 

Photo: Paul Gorbould

“The Sacred” by Stephen Dunn is included in Good Poems, American Places Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. Find the book at Amazon.com.

Zero Hour, poem by Stephen Dunn

ZERO HOUR
by Stephen Dunn

It was the hour of simply nothing,

not a single desire in my western heart,

and no ancient system

of breathing and postures,

no big idea justifying what I felt.


 
There was even an absence of despair.

 

“Anything goes,” I said to myself.

All the clocks were high. Above them,

hundreds of stars flickering if, if, if.

Everywhere in the universe, it seemed,

some next thing was gathering itself.


 
I started to feel something,
but it was nothing more than a moment

passing into another, or was it less

eloquent than that, purely muscular,

some meaningless twitch?


 
I’d let someone else make it rhyme.

STEPHEN DUNN (born 1939) has written fifteen collections of poetry, including Different Hours (where “Zero Hour” appears), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. A recipient of the Academy Award in Literature fro the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.

Photo: “Cloud Water Circle” by Gail Walks Across, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

At the Restaurant, Poem by Stephen Dunn

AT THE RESTAURANT

by Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people
and a public place the wrong place
for what you’re thinking–
 
stop this now.
 
Who do you think you are?
The duck à l’orange is spectacular,
the flan the best in town.
 
But there among your friends
is the unspoken, as ever,
chatter and gaiety its familiar song.
 
And there’s your chronic emptiness
spiraling upward in search of words
you’ll dare not say
 
without irony.
You should have stayed at home.
It’s part of the social contract
 
to seem to be where your body is,
and you’ve been elsewhere like this,
for Christ’s sake, countless times;
 
behave, feign.
 
Certainly you believe a part of decency
is to overlook, to let pass?
Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan’s
 
black dress, Paul’s promotion and raise.
Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.
Insufficient, the merely decent man.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in New York City in 1939, Stephen Dunn is the author of 15 collections of poetry, including DIFFERENT HOURS, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Dunn is the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College and lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, the writer Barbara Hurd.

###

I picked up DIFFERENT HOURS by Stephen Dunn recently for $1 at an Out of the Closet thrift store (the best place in L.A. to purchase used books — for the quality of titles and low prices). When I flipped open the book this morning, I came to “At the Restaurant,” which reminded me of the poem I posted yesterday (“Dinner at the Who’s Who” by Laure-Anne Bosselaar).

People who follow this blog (and thank you for doing so!) know that I often post a number of entries on the same day that follow a theme. We had days filled with poetry about hardboiled eggs, cheese, libraries, and other topics.

The two recent poems by Stephen Dunn and Laure-Anne Bosselaar are about people tired of artifices who want to speak what’s in their hearts and souls. And these wonderful poets have the sensitivity and talent to tell us just what they are thinking and feeling — and what they’d like to share with their cultured friends. Instead, they write poems  — and tell the world.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar also served as coeditor of NIGHT OUT: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants, and Bars, which we featured in a post last August. Find this terrific collection at Amazon.com.

Zero Hour, Poem by Stephen Dunn

ZERO HOUR

by Stephen Dunn

It was the hour of simply nothing,


not a single desire in my western heart,


and no ancient system


of breathing and postures,


no big idea justifying what I felt.



 

There was even an absence of despair.


 


“Anything goes,” I said to myself.


All the clocks were high. Above them,


hundreds of stars flickering if, if, if.


Everywhere in the universe, it seemed,


some next thing was gathering itself.



 

I started to feel something,

but it was nothing more than a moment


passing into another, or was it less


eloquent than that, purely muscular,


some meaningless twitch?



 

I’d let someone else make it rhyme.

STEPHEN DUNN (born 1939) has written fifteen collections of poetry, including Different Hours (where “Zero Hour” appears), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. A recipient of the Academy Award in Literature fro the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.

Photo: “Cloud Water Circle” by Gail Walks Across, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Toward the Verrazano, Poem by Stephen Dunn

TOWARD THE VERRAZANO

Poem by Stephen Dunn

Up from South Jersey and the low persistent

pines, pollution curls into the sky

like dark cast-off ribbons

and the part of us that’s pure camera,

that loves funnel clouds and blood

on a white dress, is satisfied.

At mile 127, no trace of a tree now,

nothing but concrete and high tension

wires, we hood toward to Outerbridge

past Arthur Kill Road where garbage trucks

work the largest landfill in the world.

The windscreens are littered, gorgeous

with rotogravure sections, torn love

letters mauve once-used tissues. The gulls

dip down like addicts, rise like angels.

Soon we’re in traffic, row houses, a college

we’ve never heard of stark as an asylum.

In the distance there it is, the crown

of this back way in, immense, silvery, 

and in no time we’re suspended

out over the Narrows by a logic linked

to faith, so accustomed to the miraculous

we hardly speak, and when we do

it’s with those words found on picture postcards

from polite friends with nothing to say. 

Above photo: Arthur Kill Road, Staten Island, New York (1973), EPA Photo from National Archives.

Note: The title refers to the Verranzano Bridge, a suspension bridge that connects Staten Island and Brooklyn (see photo at left — U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Snyder)

The Sacred, Poem by Stephen Dunn

THE SACRED

Poem by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had

            a sacred place

and the students fidgeted and shrank

 

in their chairs, the most serious of them all

            said it was his car,

being in it alone, his tape deck playing

 

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth

            had been spoken

and began speaking about their rooms,

 

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,

            the car in motion,

music filling it, and sometimes one other person

 

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard

            and how far away

a car could take him from the need

 

to speak, or to answer, the key

            in having a key

and putting it in, and going. 

Photo: Paul Gorbould

“The Sacred” by Stephen Dunn is included in Good Poems, American Places Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. Find the book at Amazon.com.