One of the unsung benefits of being a lowly adjunct professor at a community college is getting to meet the visiting writers, up close and personal. The ones you’d ordinarily have to admire from afar? You get to go out to dinner with them. And their guide dogs.
This week I had the distinct pleasure of breaking bread (well, corn bread) with the poet and memoirist Steven Kuusisto, visiting Austin from his digs in Iowa. Steven is one of those guys who makes you feel a little like a dullard. Not on purpose, but he’s just so dang smart, peppering his conversation with quotes from Shakespeare and Jimmy Carter and Frank Zappa and the like. All the while, loving up the beautiful lab at his feet…
Steven’s been blind since birth — a topic of profound sensuality in his poems and memoir, Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening. There is no lack of vision here, I assure you. There is a sense of adventure in his blindness, really. The traveling around the world by ear, the training to work with a dog, the purchase of a very, very fine 12-string guitar because he was never going to buy a car. His is a contagious clarity and passion that I recommend.
Let’s start with this:
Elegy for a Guide Dog
Corky, where you are now can you see again?
Are you free of the aches and all the uncoiled walking
That we do down here—
(Read the rest here…)
Lucky you to have met Steven! Thanks for introducing me to his work. A good reminder: there are so many ways of seeing.
This is lovely, even though it makes me cry.(Plus this dog looks like Marley, another literary canine who breaks my heart…)
PS–one of my favorite movies is “At First Sight,” where Val Kilmer plays a blind man… a great exploration of eyesight vs. SIGHT.
Wow. What a tear-jerker, even though it is full of hope and light. Still, dead pets are gut-wrenching, and Corky was more than a pet.
In the tall grass–yes, that’s where I’d put dog heaven. How wonderful that you got to eat with him and share conversation, too.
Thanks for the notes, ya’ll. It is a heartbreaker, this poem, isn’t it? But in a totally life-affirming way… I just love it.
It’s not just the poem, but the pictures of Corky in VENICE that touch my heart. What would it be like to have to remake that amazing man-guide dog relationship (so much deeper than man-pet dog) over and over for a human lifetime…
Mary Lee
A Year of Reading