Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn describes his path to writing as “most unlikely.”
Raised in a family without books, the first in his family to go to
college (on a basketball scholarship), Dunn served in the armed forces,
played professional sport and later worked as a copywriter in
advertising. Then, after a friend completed his graduate school
application, he attended Syracuse to study writing with Philip Booth,
Donald Justice and W. D. Snodgrass. Perhaps his path explains the style
of his poems—a style that former U.S. Poet Laureate and Winter Park
Institute inaugural scholar-in-residence Billy Collins refers to as
“thoughtful trustworthy poems.”
Dunn’s poems—sometimes funny,
sometimes serious—are always thought provoking. During the second
installment of Winter With the Writers, he entertained the audience with
a variety of readings. “After,” which is the behind the scenes story
of what happened after Jack and Jill fell down the hill, resulted in a
lot of laugher.
“Our mistake was trying to do something together, Jill sighs.
Jack says, If you'd have let go for once
you wouldn't have come tumbling after.
He's in a wheelchair, but she's still an item––
for the rest of their existence confined
to a little, rhyming story.”
After
reading a dozen poems, Dunn sat down with Winter With the Writers
Director Carol Frost to answer questions submitted by the audience. He
discussed the year he spent in Spain at age 27 to see if he could write
as well as his writing habits.
“I used to have good writing
habits. I wrote every morning for many hours because I had a great
teaching schedule and an indulgent wife,” said Dunn. “Now I have less
structure … but more success sticking with poems.
Dunn said he
used to complete one of every five poems and now he completes three out
of five. “Everything,” said Dunn, “deserves poetry.”
When asked
about his greatest inspiration in life, Dunn answered in keeping with
his thoughtful, candid poetic style: “If I waited for inspiration, I’d
only write a few poems a year!”
2011 Winter With the Writers Continues
On Thursday, February 3, the series will continue with David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly (1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Awards, Pulitzer finalist), Golden Child (1998 Tony nomination, 1997 OBIE Award), FOB (1981 OBIE Award), The Dance and the Railroad (Drama Desk nomination), Family Devotions (Drama Desk Nomination), and Sound and Beauty, and Bondage. His newest play, Yellow Face, which premiered at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum and New York's Public Theatre, won a 2008 OBIE Award and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. Hwang is the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College. Read more about David Henry Hwang.
A live stream for Mr. Hwang's reading will be available on the WWW homepage at 8 PM Thursday, Feb 3, 2011.
