Lines of Defense

Stephen Dunn (1939–2021) was the author of nineteen poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Different Hours. He was a distinguished professor emeritus at Richard Stockton University and received an Academy Award in Literature, among many other honors.

"Stephen Dunn's fresh batch of poems teaches us that 'to tell' is just as good as 'to show' if you have something worth telling. These are smart, forceful, meticulously spoken poems that tell us some vital truths about how to conduct our lives." -- Billy Collins "Stephen Dunn's newest poems-retrospective, elegiac, comic, quotidian, tactful, and transcendent-true the self's comprehensions of its own stories as a sawyer's jig, file, and hammer true a saw, yet without ever sacrificing tenderness for sharpness (or the reverse). Lines of Defense reconfirms Dunn's long-held place as one of our most necessary American poets: if he did not exist, we would have to invent him. But-what luck- exist he does." -- Jane Hirshfield "Over a lifetime richly invested in poetry, Dunn has mastered his signature take on an artfully colloquial voice that, in the guise of plainspeaking, slyly lampoons our daily pretensions, tenderly empathizes with our daily disappointments, and reminds us that the day-to-day can serve as the gateway to otherness. Lines of Defense is an admirable addition to that life-work, its difficult honesties and wrestlings with conscience lurking under beckoningly, entertainingly casual surfaces." -- Albert Goldbarth