Stephen Dobyns

Stephen Dobyns Poems

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
...

Over a cup of coffee or sitting on a park bench or
walking the dog, he would recall some incident
from his youth—nothing significant—climbing a tree
...

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
...

Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass—
a blend of stock car racing and the never
...

Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.
It is early and the baby in her crib
has begun her conversation with the gods
...

A man tears a chunk of bread off the brown loaf,
then wipes the gravy from his plate. Around him
at the long table, friends fill their mouths
...

How smart is smart? thinks Heart. Is smart
what's in the brain or the size of the container?
What do I know about what I do not know?
...

Heart's friend Greasy gets nixed by a stroke.
His pals give him a wake; they drink all night.
The next day they cart the coffin to the church.
...

A record store on Wabash was where
I bought my first album. I was a freshman
in college and played the record in my room
...

At the edge of a golf course, a man watches
geese land on a pond, the bottom of which
is spotted with white golf balls. It is October
...

Because his wife refused to miss a dress fitting,
she missed his death instead. He painted to the last,
a portrait in profile of his gardener sitting
...

12.

How calm is the spring evening, and the water
barely a ripple. My son stands at the edge
tossing in pebbles, then jumping back. He knows
...

My stepdaughter is three and we have some games
we play when she gets back from day care and I
have finished my work for the day. In one game,
...

'I have begun to think,' he wrote in a late letter,
'that one cannot help others at all.' This
from a man who once called friendship the highest
...

15.

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
...

The girls he followed down the street, the heartbreaks
he pretended to suffer, the giddy letters he wrote
...

The heavy lidded enterprise of the dead
begins with forgetting, ends with forgotten.
Like smoke, so thick at first but higher
...

Life begins, you make some friends,
what futures you plan for one another.
No failures here, no one sent to prison.
...

Jesus agreed to send out for Chinese.
Styrofoam containers were placed before
the Disciples. All received two egg rolls.
...

Four fellows in orange uniforms
and a fifth in a dismal suit play
pickup soccer in the street. It's their
...

Stephen Dobyns Biography

Stephen J. Dobyns (born February 19, 1941) is an American poet and novelist born in Orange, New Jersey, and residing in Westerly, RI. Dobyns was born on February 19, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey to Lester L., an Episcopal minister, and Barbara Johnston Dobyns. Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, transferred to and graduated from Wayne State University in 1964, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News. He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University. In 1995, as a professor of English at Syracuse University, he was involved in a sexual discrimination scandal. Francine Prose defended him by portraying his accuser and the school as having reacted to outdated neo-Victorian victim-feminism policies.)

The Best Poem Of Stephen Dobyns

Loud Music

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she'd like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.

Stephen Dobyns Comments

grant marcus 01 December 2020

I love Stephen Dobyns. He is the supreme story/poet. You left out one INCREDIBLE poem by Dobyns called, " White Pig." It's in Cemetery Nights, pp 58. You should include it in his work. It had such an impact on me and opened my eyes to what great writer he is.

0 0 Reply
leonellys 20 September 2019

heyyyyyyy its lee im here follow my tiktok @rose.lely i love animals i have instagram follow me

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Marcello Comitini 30 November 2018

I was enchanted by Stephen Dobyns's poem Over a cup of coffee and published the translation in Italian on this site

0 1 Reply
FRANK GRANDE 18 June 2018

READ MY FIRST DOBYNS , IS FAT BOB DEAD YET. LAUGHED ALL THROUGH IT, GREAT WRITING, SHOULD BE A MOVIE.

1 1 Reply

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