Stephen Kuusisto on Listening

11 January 2009

I had the privilege of hearing Stephen Kuusisto, the remarkable writer, blind since birth, indict us writers for not listening well enough. He rightly pointed out that images have dominated contemporary writing, at the expense of other senses, since Hemingway’s time. He has generously posted the text of this insightful and moving talk, which he spoke to us flawlessly and compellingly, only seconds after hearing it in his earbud, synthesized in a robotic voice. You can read the complete text, with comments, on his blog. Enjoy!

Similar Articles:

  1. Kuusisto on Writing Workshops
  2. Open Thanks to the Pacific University MFA Program and All Who Sail in Her
  3. The Beginning of the End (of the Beginning)

Liked this? Receive new ones in your inbox.

(You can unsubscribe any time.)

Posted in MFA, Poetry | Tagged , | Comments (6)

RSS Subscribe    Print Print   

  • http://www.sacredpassages.com Gavin Frye

    Thanks so much for sharing Steve’s talk and link to his site, Robert. Having never heard of him (no pun intended), I found his talk quite compelling. One of my passions is listening, and I’ve added his blog to my daily list of blogs so I can stay in touch with his unique perspective and powerful voice. All my best to you and Val as you complete your final time together with your fellow students/writers. Regards, Gavin

  • Robert

    He is remarkable. Val is reading his memoir, _Planet of the Blind_, and is enthralled.

  • http://www.lesliewhat.net Leslie ?

    Thanks for the link, Robert.

  • Robert

    As a soon-to-be alumnus, I feel a filial duty to pass along such tid bits.

  • http://www.sacredpassages.com Gavin Frye

    Dear Robert, In part due to the wondrous inspiration of you and your blog, I have opened up to regular writing in my life. I am grateful to be falling into the rhythm of my own writing voice (as you may have noticed with my sending out weekly journals to so many). Within the next week my blog will be designed and I will have even more canvas inviting me to share myself in words.

    I just discovered a wonderful passage about writing by novelist Gary Lutz — and just had to pass it along your way — enjoy! Reagrd, Gavin

    “Once the words begin to settle into their circumstance in a sentence and decide to make the most of their predicament, they look around and take notice of their neighbors. They seek out affinities, they adapt to each other, they begin to make adjustments in their appearance to try to blend in with each other better and enhance any resemblance. Pretty soon in the writer’s eyes the words in the sentence are all vibrating and destabilizing themselves: no longer solid and immutable, they start to flutter this way and that in playful receptivity, taking into themselves parts of neighboring words, or shedding parts of themselves into the gutter of the page or screen; and in this process of intimate mutation and transformation, the words swap alphabetary vitals and viscera, tiny bits and dabs of their languagey inner and outer natures; the words intermingle and blend and smear and recompose themselves. They begin to take on a similar typographical physique. The phrasing now feels literally all of a piece. The lonely space of the sentence feels colonized. There’s a sumptuousness, a roundedness, a dimensionality to what has emerged. The sentence feels filled in from end to end; there are no vacant segments along its length, no pockets of unperforming or underperforming verbal matter. The words of the sentence have in fact formed a united community.”

  • Robert

    Thanks, Gavin. This is great. Here is one of my favorite quotes on writing, which I used in the critical introduction portion of my graduate reading:

    “For the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains always ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.”

    –William Stafford