Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs

by Stephen Dunn

Book Overview

Stephen Dunn experiments with short, related pieces that play off each other in the manner of jazz improvisations. The resulting pairs cover such subjects as Scruples/Saints, Hypocrisy/Precision, and Anger/Generosity. The wisdom and startling turns we've come to expect from Dunn are everywhere in the ninety miniatures (forty-five pairs) that comprise this volume.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393319571
• ISBN13: 9780393319576
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Deep and Accessible

This is poetry, prose, philosophy. These paired prose poems offer the reader a place to think and to feel. You get the best of what poetry and prose can do. All of them repay a second read. That rare kind of writer who goes deep but remains accessible. Excellent.

Sparks and washings

Stephen has been metamorphizing before our eyes. 'What is this? What is this?' we ask, and the answers, in his best moments, are never going to be simple. He is too good to us to allow us what we believe to be simplicity (and we may even be right about it). This book undulates in pairs that entertain with no boorish party manners. I laugh harder at the more serious mutterings, and I always feel the urge to sing. Excellent well, Stephen...excellent well.

These short prose pairs speak volumes.

These prose pairs are surprisingly musical, counterpointing the rhythms of English prose (see Syntax and Mimesis) and the tighter, more angular rhythms of poetry. The poems are as multifaceted as diamonds and strike sparks as they play off each other and their own titles. They open in and out, in very direction. The voice is fluid, supple, and seductive. It's an illuminating and powerfully moving book.