Stephen Kuusisto

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.

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,

Stephen Kuusisto:

An Evocation of the Senses

Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille

Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine

Key images?

Use and absence of light?

Use of color and light?

Metaphors?

Guess

Awake All Night

Open Ended Question

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.

Allusions?

Use of light and sound?

• Discuss how the evocation of the senses is connected to imagery or another literary device present in one of Kuusisto's poems

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.

Important images?

Reference to color?

Metaphors?

"Letters to Borges"

Background Information

• Best-selling memoirist Stephen Kuusisto uses the themes of travel, place, religion, music, art, and loneliness to explore the relationship between seeing, blindness, and being
• In poems addressed to Jorge Luis Borges—another poet who lived with blindness—Kuusisto leverages seeing as negative capability, creating intimacy with deep imagination and uncommon perceptions.

• Stephen Kuusisto has been blind since youth and uses his experiences as inspiration for many of his poems
• Professor of Disability Studies for Center of Human Policy at Syracuse
• He is the author of two memoirs and two poetry collections
• He is a frequent speaker and advocate for those suffering from disabilities and adversity on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered"