Only Bread, Only Light: Poems

by Stephen Kuusisto

Overview

With this, his first collection of poetry, Stephen Kuusisto (author of the memoir Planet of the Blind) explores blindness and curiosity, loneliness and the found instruments of continuation. Exploiting the seeming contradiction of poetry’s reliance upon visual imagery with Kuusisto’s own sightlessness, these poems cultivate a world of listening: to the natural world, to the voices of family and strangers, to music and the words of great writers and thinkers.
Kuusisto has written elsewhere, "I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope; my impressions of the world at once beautiful and largely useless." So it is no surprise that in his poems mortal vision is uncertain, supported only by the ardor of imagination and the grace of lyric surprise. Sensually rich and detailed, Kuusisto’s poems are humorous, complex, and intellectually engaged. This collection reveals a major new poetic talent.

"Only Bread, Only Light"

At times the blind see light,
And that moment is the Sistine ceiling,

Grace among buildings—no one asks
For it, no one asks.

After all, this is solitude,
Daylight’s finger,

Blake’s angel
Parting willow leaves.

I should know better.
Get with the business

Of walking the lovely, satisfied,
Indifferent weather—

Bread baking
On Arthur Avenue

This first warm day of June.
I stand on the corner

For priceless seconds.
Now everything to me falls shadow

Stephen Kuusisto’s 1998 memoir Planet of the Blind received tremendous international attention, including appearances on Oprah, Dateline, and Talk of the Nation. The New York Times named it a "Notable Book of the Year" and praised it as "a book that makes the reader understand the terrifying experience of blindness, a book that stands on its own as the lyrical memoir of a poet." A spokesperson for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Kuusisto teaches at Ohio State University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556591501
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	10/01/2000
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Blind Days in Early Youth

No Name for It

Start with a hyphenated word, something Swedish —
Rus-blind; "blind drunk"; blinda-fläcken; "blind spot";

Blind-pipa; "nonentity," "a type of ghost."
En blind höna hittar också ett korn;

"The fool's arrow sometimes hits the mark."
(That's what the Swedish matron said

When I was a boy climbing stairs.)
She pointed with a cane: Tsk tsk,

Barna-blind; "blind child."
Her tone mixed piety and reproof — pure Strindberg!

It echoed on the stairs, barna-blind —
"Blind from birth." En blind höna hittar ...

The blind child's arrow ...

Terra Incognita

When I walked in the yard
Before sunrise,
I made my way among patches of dew —
Those constellations on the darkened grass.

The webs drifted like anemones,
And I thought of lifting them
As if they were skeins of brilliant yarn
That I could give to my mother
Who'd keep them
Until we knew what to make.

I pictured a shirt —
How I'd pull it over my head
And vanish in the sudden light.

Awake All Night

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.

Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine

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.

Accomplice

It was in the nature of things
That I couldn't see. The nature of things
That the magpie should watch me.

Perpetual strangers
Touch my sleeves,
The steel light of August

Draws me, affirming
Over brilliant and terrible streets,
And the bird looks on —

You'd swear
He's like those wounded gentlemen
From the First World War,

Watchful, innocent,
Hoarding his words
In case someone is lost.

Guess

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.

Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille

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,
Return to the book.

Poor poet,
He hurries to the river,
And into the river,
His eyes as wide
As a man can make them.
The long sunlight of late summer
Floods the rhododendrons —
This is the light
That pulls him
Under the stream,
Hands, lips, fingers, opening ...

The river
And the gems
Of topaz
Entering and leaving,
And the grasses' laughter —
These are shadows,
Prefaces of their truth....

I strain for color,
The preclusion of sight,
And put aside the book,
Paradiso in braille.

Who the hell is this
Turning again to the window,
His fingers reaching the sill,
Hands still touching
A river that no one can see?

Table of Contents

1
	Blind Days in Early Youth	5
	Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine	8
	Accomplice	10
	Guess	11
	Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille	12
	Serenade	15
	At the Woods' Edge	17
	Diagram	19
	Guiding Eyes	20
	Only Bread, Only Light	22
2
	Still	25
	Drink	26
	Post-Orphic	28
	Summer at North Farm	29
	Helsinki, 1958	30
	Facing the Trees	32
	In the Attic	35
	Praise for the Yiddish Poets	36
	Lying Still	37
	Competing Interests within the Family: 1909	39
	At the Summer House	40
	First Things	41
	Waiting	42
3
	Deus Faber	47
	Tourists	50
	Sheraton, Chicago, Three A.M.	52
	In Our Time	54
	Mandelstam	56
	Tenth Muse	57
	The Approximate Hour	58
	Allegro	59
	Prism	60
	Knossos	62
	The Invention of the Wolf	63
	Open Window	65
	King of the Crickets	67
	Breton-esque	69
	Rachmaninoff's Curtains	70
	Running to the Wood	71
	Viaticum	72
	Essay on November	73
	Mnemosyne	74
	"Revolution by Night"	75
	Descant on Climbing and Descending Stairs	77
	The Sleep I Didn't Sleep	81
	"Talking Books"	82
	Elegy for Ted Berrigan	84
	Ode to Ogden Nash	86
	Ode to My Sleeping Pills	88
	The Mockingbird on Central	89
	Corazon, Corazon	90
4
	Seven Prayers	95
	Night Seasons	102
	About the Author	104

Editorial Reviews

Planet of the Blind, a bestseller and New York Times Notable memoir that landed Kuusisto on Oprah, Dateline and other shows in 1998, has a companion volume in this slim, winning collection. Kuusisto successfully melds music, memory, and his wide-ranging erudition into quiet depictions of his experiences, presenting everything from evocations of a boyhood in Helsinki to earnest poems for Ted Berrigan, "Rachmaninoff's Curtains" and Ogden Nash. Some of its most powerful moments reside in the poet's accounts of his failing eyesight: "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 wine stem." Showing considerable dexterity, Kuusisto also works at times in a more traditional style that draws on surrealism, folklore and metaphysical verse. While too many poems suffer from decorative passages and tidy closure, others show Kuusisto marshalling considerable skills to create finely tuned descriptions of events past and present. In its best moments, this book succeeds in rendering the world both beautiful and strange: "The trees are foreign soldiers/ Talking low in a different tongue." (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It is difficult to approach the writing of Kuusisto except through the avenue of his blindness, which threads through this book of poems as it does through his recent and commercially very successful memoir, Planet of the Blind. Yet Kuusisto never stoops to the role of spokesman for the blind, and his lyricism and humor are so exuberant and strong that they explain our world as well as they explain his. His approach to metaphor can be dazzling, as in "Ode to My Sleeping Pills": "Dusk that passes/ Through a priest's glove, Evening with spring birds...you comb my hair,/ Smooth my face, / Perfect me in secret/ Like the rose/ That was eaten at dawn/ By that early pope/ Whose name I won't remember." Some of these poems feel more like sketches or notes than completed works, but several of the best--"Diagram," "Post-Orphic," "Seven Prayers," and "Essay on November"--are among the most striking and accomplished lyrics of the last several years. Highly recommended.--Graham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In one of his poems, Kuusisto calls himself a "fool of the night seasons," referring to the blindness that affected him during his youth. This poet, however, is no fool about poetry or the construction of beautiful and haunting lines. From the first section of childhood poems in which he appears to be partially sighted, he explores things he will hold dear throughout the poems: light, senses, the love of language, contradiction.Ironically, it is the imagery he lost to blindness that seems strongest in these early poems. For example, He uses color beautifully, "And I saw light / That took a river's form— / Light flashing, / Reddish-gold, / Between two banks..." even as he reveals how his blindness affects the poem's narrative, "Who the hell is this / Turning again to the window, / His finger reaching the sill, / Hands still touching / A river no one can see?" ("Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille"). Sometimes his short line is haiku-esque in imagery and shape, as in the delicate poem, "Facing the Trees." "We say / Sweet rain / Frees the mushrooms / Our lives / Whirl / Around us / Like Winged seeds." The poems are also influenced by places, his childhood home of Finland, and elsewhere, and are strengthened by a specific awareness of history, as in: "In Finland, in Karstula / Ur-village of my father, / They ate salted roots, // Black parsnips, / Cloud-berries, / Worm-wood." He writes about his seeing-eye dog, about myths and stories—King of the Crickets and Talking Books. His poems refer to muses and allegros, prisms and Breton. Though he calls himself a "fool of the night seasons,"—and indeed there are moments of darkness in these poems—they are filled with light, with careful and startling images, and with a fine appreciation for the senses. His blindness is simply one facet of his work, to be considered as well as any other aspect of his writing persona. If there is any influence, it is an advantage—all the sensory language is lyrical and equally well-crafted, as though only through his night season could the senses, including the absent one, be equally balanced in these poems.