Get Lit Minute
A weekly podcast focusing on all things poetic, poetry and poets. Each week we will feature a poet and their poem. We will be highlighting classic poets from our In-School Anthology, sharing brief bios on the poet and a spoken word reading of one of their poems. We will also be introducing contemporary poets from the greater poetry community and our own Get Lit poets into the podcast space.
Get Lit Minute
Stephen Dunn | "Sweetness"
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Stephen Dunn. He has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing. Dunn's books of poetry include Lines of Defense (W. W. Norton, 2014); Different Hours (2000); Local Time (1986); and Looking For Holes In the Ceiling (1974). Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, "Sweetness". See more of his work in our Get Lit Anthology.
"Sweetness"
Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care
where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.