Stephen Dunn

Template:Use mdy dates Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox writer Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939Template:SpndJune 24, 2021) was an American poet and educator who authored twenty-one collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2000 collection, Different Hours, and received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<ref name="MacWilliams" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He also won three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowship,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Rockefeller Foundations Fellowship.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life

Dunn was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York on June 24, 1939.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His parents were Ellen (Fleishman) and Charles Dunn.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He attended Forest Hills High School, where he played basketball. After graduating in 1957, he studied history at Hofstra University. He played guard for its basketball team and was part of the squad that had a 23–1 record during the 1959–60 season.<ref name="NYT obit">Template:Cite news</ref> He was nicknamed "Radar" for his ability to make jump shots.<ref name=MacWilliams>Template:Cite news</ref>

Dunn graduated from Hofstra University in 1962 and went on to play one season for the Williamsport Billies of the Eastern Basketball Association.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He then worked in advertising until he was 26, when he traveled to Spain to pen a novel, which he ended up discarding. He subsequently undertook postgraduate studies at Syracuse University, obtaining a master's degree in creative writing in 1970.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

Dunn began teaching at Stockton University in 1974 and published his first full-length collection entitled Looking for Holes in the Ceiling that same year.<ref name="NYT obit"/> He continued working at Stockton for approximately three decades,<ref name="NYT obit"/> and also taught at Wichita State University, University of Washington, Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Princeton University.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A collection of essays about Dunn's poetry was published in 2013.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He finished his last book, The Not Yet Fallen World, shortly before his death.<ref name=MacWilliams/> Dunn thought it was the best work he had written.<ref name=MacWilliams/> It was published in May 2022, nearly a year after he died,<ref name=Barlow>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal life

Dunn married his first wife, Lois Kelly, in 1964. Together, they had two children: Susanne and Andrea. They divorced in 2001. He married Barbara Hurd the following year.<ref name="NYT obit"/>

Dunn had earlier lived in Port Republic, New Jersey. He later resided at homes in Ocean City, New Jersey, as well as Hurd's hometown of Frostburg, Maryland.<ref>Strauss, Robert. "Ode to Joi(sey)", The New York Times, April 27, 2003. Accessed October 9, 2007. "Mr. Dunn, who used to live in Port Republic, a remote town in the interior of South Jersey, now divides his time between Ocean City and his wife's hometown, Frostburg, Md."</ref> He died on the night of his 82nd birthday at his home in Frostburg.<ref name=Barlow/> He suffered from Parkinson's disease prior to his death.<ref name="NYT obit"/><ref name=MacWilliams/>

Selected bibliography

Poetry

Collections

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• Full of Lust and Good Usage, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1976. Template:ISBN
• A Circus of Needs, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1978. Template:ISBN
• Work and Love, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1981. Template:ISBN
• Not Dancing, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1984. Template:ISBN
• Local Time, Quill/Morrow (New York, NY), 1986. Template:ISBN
• Between Angels: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1989. Template:ISBN
• Landscape at the End of the Century: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1991. Template:ISBN
• New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1994. Template:ISBN
• Loosestrife: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1996. Template:ISBN
• Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 1998. Template:ISBN
• Different Hours, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2000. Template:ISBN
• The Insistence of Beauty: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2004. Template:ISBN
• Local Visitations: Poems, Norton, 2004, Template:ISBN
• Everything Else in the World, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2006. Template:ISBN
• What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2009. Template:ISBN
• Here and Now: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2011. Template:ISBN
• Lines of Defense, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2014. Template:ISBN
• Whereas: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2017. Template:ISBN
• Pagan Virtues: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2019. ISBN 978-1324002314
• The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems. W. W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2022. ISBN 978-0-393-88225-4.

Selected list of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected	Ref
Ambush at five o'clock	2014	Template:Cite journal		Template:N/a
Salvation	2005	Template:Cite journal		Template:N/a
Whereas the animal I cannot help but be	2015	Template:Cite journal		Template:N/a
Charlotte Bronte in Leeds Point	2003			<ref name="NYT obit"/>
The Routine Things Around the House	2006			<ref name="NYT obit"/>
The Kiss	2007			<ref name="NYT obit"/>
Here and Now	2011			<ref name="NYT obit"/>
Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer	2014			<ref name="NYT obit"/>
Glimpses	2018			<ref name="NYT obit"/>

Non fiction

• Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. Template:ISBN

• Degrees of Fidelity: Essays on Poetry and the Latitudes of the Personal, Tiger Bark Press, 2018. Template:ISBN

External links

• Interview with Stephen Dunn for The Cortland Review. Template:Webarchive
• Author Interview in The Commonline Journal, #011
• Author interview for Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)
• Article on Dunn winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize
• "The Lost Thing" - a poem by Stephen Dunn
• Stephen Dunn biography
• Audio: Stephen Dunn reads "Talk to God" from the book What Goes On (via poemsoutloud.net)