Letters to Borges

by Stephen Kuusisto

Overview

"[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor."—The New York Times

"A talented writer judged against any standard."—USA Today

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.

"Alone"

Today I understood
While drinking tea
& hearing rain
That the word for birth
& the one for sin
Come from a single root
In Finnish — that tongue they
Spoke when I was small.
Synnty, untranslatable,
Original sin nearly,
But softer,
Like water
Carried a long way
In a jar
In May.

Stephen Kuusisto is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of two collections of poetry and two memoirs, including the best-selling Planet of the Blind (W. W. Norton&Company, 1998). A graduate from and former teacher at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Kuusisto now teaches at Syracuse University in New York State.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619320253
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	04/23/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	110
File size:	403 KB

About the Author

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of “Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening” and the acclaimed memoir “Planet of the Blind”, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”. His second collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press, "Letters to Borges", is scheduled for release in October 2012. As director of the Renee Crown University Honors Program and a University Professor at Syracuse University, Steve speaks widely on diversity, disability, education, and public policy. www.stephenkuusisto.com, www.planet-of-the-blind.com. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Table of Contents

1

Emily Dickinson and the Ophthalmoscope 5

Write It Down 8

The Books to Come 10

Letter to Borges from Buenos Aires 12

Letter to Borges in His Parlor 13

Letter to Borges from Estonia 14

Letter to Borges from Galway 15

Letter to Borges from London 16

Why Poetry Surpasses Your Friends 17

2

Early Conditions 21

Letter from Vienna, Close of Day 22

At the Winter Solstice, Iowa City 23

Alone 24

If You Ask 25

Life in Wartime 26

Prose Poem Written at 2 a.m. 27

Letter from Saratoga, California 30

Approaching Rain 32

But Seconds, Minutes of Life 33

Book Review 34

Normal 35

Café Solo with an Old Horn 38

Apple Mazurka 39

By Halves 40

Jazz from Cripple City 41

The War Production Canzone 42

3

Letter to Borges from North Carolina 47

Letter to Borges from Tampere, Finland 49

Letter to Borges from Madrid 50

Letter to Borges from Helsinki 51

Letter to Borges from Los Angeles 52

Letter to Borges from Graz 54

Letter to Borges from Dublin 55

Letter to Borges from Houston, Texas 56

Letter to Borges from Grazer Schloβberg 57

London, Summer Heat Wave 58

Letter to Borges from New York City 59

Letter to Borges from Pittsburgh 60

Letter to Borges from Porvoo, Finland 61

Letter to Borges from Turku, Finland 62

Why this consistent sadness, Borges? 64

Without Stars 65

Borges: They Are Knocking the Wind out of Me in Iowa City 66

Letter to Borges from Troy, New York 68

4

As for the World 71

Sundays in Ohio 72

The Iowa River 73

Lullaby: Happenstance Blues 74

Kansas: Deaf Girl Watching the Moon 75

Elegy for Ray Charles and His Mother 76

Elegy for Lucy Grealy 78

Autobiographia Literaria 80

For Anyone at All 81

Dream in D Minor 82

Poems in a Book 83

Autumn Comedy 84

The Summer Chairs 85

They Say 87

Hornets in a Woodpile 88

"If a Nightingale Could Sing like You" 89

Ode to Victor Frankenstein 91

The Lottery Sellers 92

Erasing Stars 93

History in Empty Air 94

Elegy for a Guide Dog 96

Letter to Borges from Syracuse 97

About the Author 98