The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems
Description
“An indispensable volume.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post Book Club
A radiant celebration of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Stephen Dunn’s enduring oeuvre.
Hailed as "indispensable" (David Wojahn), Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Stephen Dunn masterfully shifts between the metaphysical and the ironic, never wavering in his essential honesty. His graceful poems confront our contradictions with tenderness and wit, enliven the ordinary with penetrating observation, and alert us to the haunting wonders and relationships that surround us.
The Not Yet Fallen World draws from all nineteen of Stephen Dunn’s crystalline volumes, including his most recent, Pagan Virtues (2019); the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Loosestrife (1996); and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Different Hours (2000). By turns sardonic and profound, Dunn examines the disguises we don to hide from ourselves and reveals sublime beauty hidden within seemingly mundane interactions. Nine new poems extend the poet’s inquiry into the paradoxes of contemporary life; as he writes in "Love Poem Near the End of the World," "Something keeps me holding on / to a future I didn’t think possible."
Arranged to further Dunn’s signature themes—mortality, morality, and the roles we play in the essential human comedy of getting through each day—this final collection captures the breadth of an acclaimed poet’s achievement. His legacy is a poetic expanse suffused with fearless generosity and perceptive wisdom.
Praise for The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems
Stephen Dunn’s poems remind us that honesty begins at home, with a determination to struggle against self-deception, to discover what one really thinks and feels beneath what may be expected and approved…This collection gathered from a lifetime of writing makes clear how distinct a voice Dunn has created, and how coherent, important, and moving his accomplishment.
— Carl Dennis, author of Practical Gods
It teeters on awe-inspiring, holding the substantive book that houses the collected poems of The Not Yet Fallen World.… Stephen Dunn will forever be marked as a poet of worth.
— Bruce Arlen Wasserman - New York Journal of Books
Dunn’s work is accessible, often witty and frequently employs show-stopping metaphors.
— David Starkey - California Review of Books
While the tone of Dunn’s poems continually explores the territory between earnest and ironic, it’s clear that, for this poet, ‘the heart is to be spent.'
— Jeanne Griggs - Heavy Feather Review
