Overview

Navigating a sightless world with intelligence and dark humor, Close Escapes searches for an answer to our earthly existence by way of visions only the blind can see. ""Never 'in' time,"" Stephen Kuusisto's third poetry collection, Close Escapes, moves through a river of memory. In one poem, Kuusisto is ""the blind kid again,"" pressing his finger to a cornered spider. In another, he walks down a harbor in Helsinki, ""still twenty-three among the Baltic gulls."" Adrift in time and place-Tallinn, New York, a Velamo monastery-our anchor is the poet, navigating a sightless world with intelligence and dark humor. As Kuusisto moves forward through meditations on beauty, ""dark joy,"" loss, aging, and the afterlife, he also reaches back, talking to writers, musicians, and thinkers of the past-Orwell, Marvin Bell, Salvatore Quasimodo. In one scene, Kuusisto ponders death, asking Bach to ""Tell [him] of the galant flourishes / As we leave this life."" Readers, alongside Kuusisto, are left reaching for that ""frail wisdom,"" for an answer to the question of our earthly existence. We find tenderness in our human connections, both lasting and fleeting, sometimes gone. We drift onward, learning to find ""music in human silence.""

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9781556596896

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Close Escapes “Acclaimed memoirist and poet Kuusisto, widely recognized for his poetic treatment of disability and blindness, delivers a fourth book of poems characterized by a kind of Nordic Zen. Kuusisto creates an atmosphere of wintry delights, such as 'snow with its murmuring rhymes and half words' and the 'cold organic smell of cobblestones in rain,' and includes meditative queries similar to those of traditional Japanese verse—'Have you seen the black geese / Eating cold rowan berries?' Drawing on his family heritage, Kuusisto fondly recalls Finnish nicknames for children ('Buttercup Mockingbird / Mouse behind the chanterelle') and namedrops a number of twentieth-century Finnish poets, including Paavo Haavikko, Pentti Saarikoski, and Jarkko Laine. Kuusisto also works in references to figures significant to the visually impaired, such as Helen Keller (who 'dove into life as / A cormorant hits the sea') and Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Always a pleasure to read, Kuusisto hits a gentle stride here that alternately embraces and releases the world, where 'Down valley the river / Has melted and frozen again.'”—Diego Báez, Booklist Praise for Stephen Kuusisto “[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor.”—New York Times “Kuusisto’s meditations on his condition, and gratitude for the mind’s inner eye, remind readers that vision takes many forms, and that feelings of being lost and alone are intrinsic to human nature.”—Booklist “In [Kuusisto’s] poems, works of spare and musing beauty . . . each word is set as carefully on the page as a footstep blindly taken in an unknown place. . . . Music is a constant presence, and the tenuousness of being, a feeling made all the more daunting by sightlessness, is a steady preoccupation. But Kuusisto’s poems are exquisitely visual, too, even as the poet moves ‘through space / With hands outstretched.’”—Booklist “Letters to Borges is an insightful and much recommended addition to any poetry collection.”—Midwest Book Review “Someone Falls Overboard is crackling smart, hilarious without losing its urgency, centered firm in this historical moment yet an instant classic in the long tradition of poetry in conversation.”—Susanne Paola Antonetta, author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here “Kuusisto and Savarese explore the meaning of age, disability, poetry, and memory; what emerges is a single long poem about friendship, witty, inventive, profane.”—George Estreich, author of Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

“[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor.”—New York Times “Kuusisto’s meditations on his condition, and gratitude for the mind’s inner eye, remind readers that vision takes many forms, and that feelings of being lost and alone are intrinsic to human nature.”—Booklist “In [Kuusisto’s] poems, works of spare and musing beauty . . . each word is set as carefully on the page as a footstep blindly taken in an unknown place. . . . Music is a constant presence, and the tenuousness of being, a feeling made all the more daunting by sightlessness, is a steady preoccupation. But Kuusisto’s poems are exquisitely visual, too, even as the poet moves ‘through space / With hands outstretched.’”—Booklist “Letters to Borges is an insightful and much recommended addition to any poetry collection.”—Midwest Book Review “Someone Falls Overboard is crackling smart, hilarious without losing its urgency, centered firm in this historical moment yet an instant classic in the long tradition of poetry in conversation.”—Susanne Paola Antonetta, author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here “Kuusisto and Savarese explore the meaning of age, disability, poetry, and memory; what emerges is a single long poem about friendship, witty, inventive, profane.”—George Estreich, author of Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Author Information

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light, Letters to Borges, Old Horse, What Is to Be Done? and, most recently, Someone Falls Overboard: Talking Through Poems with Ralph James Savarese. His memoir Planet of the Blind was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and has since been followed by Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey. A Guggenheim fellow and Fulbright Scholar, Kuusisto has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, and Animal Planet. His daily blog, Planet of the Blind, is read globally by people interested in disability and contemporary culture. Kuusisto directs The Burton Blatt Institute's interdisciplinary programs in disability at Syracuse University, where he holds a University Professorship.

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