Pairing up

By Annie Holub Catalyst

Send comments to: catalyst@wildcat.arizona.edu

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Renown poet Stephen Dunn will be reading Friday in the Ada Pierce McCormick Building, Little Chapel of All Nations.

Juxtapositions intertwined with short philosophical paragraphs like meditations, glimpses; short observations and stories, idea after idea, page after page...this is Riffs and Reciprocities, poet Stephen Dunn's latest work.

A series of prose poems in pairs, the book is different because it knows no barrier except the page, yet it is not unlike modern poetry that consistently pushes beyond the world of line-breaks and figurative language. While prose poetry is not a new genre, Dunn's organization of the pieces into pairs is a poetic innovation.

"I don't think anybody has written them in pairs," said Dunn over the phone from his home in New Jersey, explaining the process behind the book.

UA creative writing professor Bob Houston called Dunn "one of America's very best poets." Currently the prodigy works as a professor at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey and his last book, Loosestrife, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996. He has published 12 books, including Riffs and Reciprocities, 10 of which are poetry.

The prose pairs began "when an old friend (literally old, 80) asked me to write on reflection and shadow," said Dunn. He became fascinated with the idea of related pairs.

"I became interested especially in not writing opposites, in having them tangentially related," said Dunn. "I would start with something that interested me and see where that might lead."

Limiting himself to no more than "a solid paragraph," Dunn spent a year and a half working on the book, as opposed to three or more years spent on others.

A month at the European writer's colony, Bolaggio, allowed Dunn to further concentrate on the work.

Riffs and Reciprocities is organized into three parts, with pairs opposite each other on the pages. Confronted with related ideas like "Scruples/Saints," the paragraphs are thoughtful ideas sometimes directly, other times indirectly, related to the title. Often, it's possible to read the piece without reading the title first, and still know exactly what it's about. Other times, reading the title last gives new perspective to the poem. "The barometer was that I had to surprise myself," Dunn said. All others he threw out.

The breadth of the wisdom within each piece is intense. Some are narrative stories; "Strangers/Acquaintances" talks about a man traveling to Utah all the way from Telluride to show Dunn his poems. The man interrupts a class, saying, "'I've come all the way from Telluride," with papers behind his back, and when Dunn turns him away, a student asks him why. "She was sure he had a gun.... But I had never thought of a gun. I was sure he was concealing poems."

Poet Stephen Dunn will give a free reading Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Ada Pierce McCormick Building, Little Chapel of All Nations.