Stephen Dunn Books

While Wade Cook is primarily known for his savvy investment strategies, Wade is also a keen thinker with a positive mental mindset. He believes in America and wants to make everyone aware of the opportunities available only in America.America is indeed the land of opportunity where everyone can reach the stars, if only they will step up on their toes just a little bit.

This book will make you feel proud to be an America; to live in the greatest country in the world. Mr. Cook is obviously very proud of his country and didn't forget where he came from and why he has reached such extraordinary success.In todays world, that is unusual.Hats off to America and Wade Cook.

After Business Buy the Bible, I would rate this book; Success: American Style as Cook's most important book to date.

This is why foreigners have saved and planned to come to America.
It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

This is why we have FREE ENTERPRISE here.
It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

This is why Americans are far wealthier than people in any other country. It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

And this book tells me and all of us a lot about Mr. Wade Cook,
SUCESS: AMERICAN STYLE and a very proud American no doubt.

Notice there are no negative reviews here. I guess that tells us a lot about the bashers. I seriously doubt if Wades ever present bashers will ever read this book. Too bad--It's their loss!

And what a great book to shut Wades ever present detractors up. Only in this great country, does anyoe and everyone have the opportunity to reach the stars.Success American Style: Unfortunately terrorists and Wade bashers will never read and benefit from this outstandin work.Great book Wade. Keep em coming.

America is truly the land of opportuity.I found this book very motivational, inspiritional and rekindled my faith in the American Dream.This may be Mr. Cooks most important book to date (especially after 911). I also recommend Business Buy The Bible and Don't Set Goals The Old Way.These books will get your attitude tuned and help you reach those lofty goals that all too often lay dormant inside you.

I love this book of poems, and I love Stephen Dunn's work in general. His masterful and eloquent (and often surprising) use of language is so artful that it must be respected by the academic writing community, yet it is accessible enough that anyone (even those who do not ordinarily "get" poetry) can read and enjoy them. Stephen Dunn is, quite simply one of the greatest living American poet.

Stephen Dunn is genious and I feel this is his best work yet, I have read this book at least twelve times, and I have't owned it that long.

Stephen Dunn has a beautiful voice that is in no way preachy or condescending to the reader. His poems are easy on the eyes and healing for the heart. S. Rea

The poems in "Between Angels" avoid cliche and the predictable territory of 'angels' -- while remaining tender, evocative, passionate, lyrical, and profound. I can't count the hours I have spent with this book, nor how many copies I have given as gifts. If I were to try to explain why I turn to poetry for companionship, nourishment, joy, beauty -- I probably would offer this book as an answer.

Stephen Dunn is a wonderful writer whose work has evolved over the years from terribly funny to terribly poignant. He is also one of the nicest men you'll ever meet. If you've never read him and wonder what you'd think, find a copy of this book in the library and read the first poem, "The Guardian Angel," which is my personal favorite of all his works. If you like it as much as I did, you'll buy the book.

This book of poems is perhaps as good, or even better than his Pulitzer Prize winning 'Different Hours.' I have read most of his works, and was a writing student of his at Stockton State College. Equally good and a must read is Stephen Dunn's 'Between Angels.'

While I have not read this entire book, today I heard the author himself read the (20 min!) poem, "Loves" from this book. After speaking with Stephen Dunn at the 1999 Millenium Future Leaders Summit, in connection with the White House Millenium Lectures, I can assure you that he is a highly interesting person, speaker and poet. His works are very introspective and offer a lot of entertainment, education, and thoughts to ponder! This is, I am sure, an excellent book.

This book of poems is perhaps as good, or even better than his Pulitzer Prize winning 'Different Hours.' I have read most of his works, and was a writing student of his at Stockton State College. Equally good and a must read is Stephen Dunn's 'Between Angels.'

As always, this collection of Dunn's is enlightening and rewarding. He's our best living American poet...

Local Visitations is a selection of free-verse poetry by Pulitzer prize-winner Stephen Dunn. Elegant and brief, these poems study the foibles of heroes who are only human. The Animals of America: The animals have come down from the hills/and through the forests and across the prairies./They are American animals, and carry with them/a history of their slaughter. There's not one/who doesn't sleep with an eye open.//Our of necessity the small have banded/with the large, the large with the large/of different species. When dark comes/they form an enormous circle.//It's all, after years of night-whispers/and long-range cries, coming together.//To make a new world the American animals/know there must be sacrifices. Every evening/a prayer is said for the spies who've volunteered/to be petted in the houses of the enemy./"They are savages," one reported,/"Let no one be fooled by their capacity for loving."

Opening with a playful and vivid poem, "Bowl Of Fruit" that, as always with Stephen Dunn, weaves its way confidently from bananas and oranges to yet another poignant and sincere statement on desire, Dunn's 12th book of poems revises familiar themes with an eye more towards celebration than despair.

Dunn hints of a Blake gone fiendish in lines such as "But surely by now you've come to realize/there is no worm, only this bowl of fruit/made of words, only these seductions." For a second, at least, the famed "invisible worm" of Blake's "The Sick Rose" is kept at bay in favor of the world's fleeting but "seductive" pleasures; a rather drastic change of tone from the almost ceaseless morbidity that characterized Dunn's previous volume, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours.

However, Dunn is hardly about to recant much of his past 11 collections of warnings in verse against the illusion of happiness, as in the wickedly enjambed poem, "Circular": "a belief in happiness bred/despair, though despair could be assuaged/by belief, which required faith . . . and best to have music/to sweeten a sadness, underscore joy."

Despite Dunn's urge towards life's morose truths, though, images of a modern-day Sisyphus daring a smile in the midst of his punishment, "a smile so inward it cannot be seen," and notions such as "at the bottom of depression, says James Hollis/is some meaningful task waiting to be found" suggest that Local Visitations is a kind of reconciliation with the harrowing blues of Different Hours.

If Different Hours advised against desire's inevitably painful temptations, many poems in Local Visitations transcend caution and despair in favor of delight and wonder. "The problem is how to look intelligent/with our mouths agape/how to be delighted, not stupefied/when the caterpillar shrugs and becomes a butterfly," Dunn avers in "Knowledge." If life's grander pleasures fail us, perhaps we might turn, instead, to its smaller joys. If the human being is doomed to fallibility, perhaps we might learn "how to love amid the encroachments," as Dunn suggests in his uniquely poignant plainspokenness.

But if, after so many books of thwarted longing, Dunn's observations on "how boring sorrows are" is not enough of a refreshment to his seasoned readers, then the playful, imaginative and engaging section of poems in which he escorts a cadre of famous authors through the landscape of his Native New Jersey serves as a remarkable new dimension to Dunn's distinctive and persistent voice.

"Because the famous usually have little to say/to each other after the first paeans of praise," Dunn explains, "the poet thought that for their own sakes/he'd have them live in separate towns." Pivoting off of this introductory poem, Dunn leaps into a succession of poems with titles such as "Chekhov in Port Republic," "Charlotte Bronte in Leeds Point," "George Eliot in Beach Haven," and "Twain in Atlantic City."

With his imagination tuned to a fever pitch, these particular poems read like short stories in verse, brimful of ideas, wit and confidence, guaranteeing the well-versed reader's pleasure. "Occasionally the weak survive/because the god that doesn't exist/wants to give us something to misinterpret/That's what Crane was thinking as he washed up on Longport Beach," Dunn narrates in "Stephen Crane in Longport."

While Dunn's playfulness here is more indicative of the work of Billy Collins or Deborah Garrison, still his voice maintains its gravity and cunning as he delves beneath the hearts of his subjects, revealing the alienation that burdened the young, brilliant Stephen Crane: "It's pointless, Crane wanted to say/wherever you're all going/but he knew they'd think he was lying/or maybe not even hear him."

Though a familiar tinge of helplessness enervates the book's tendency towards an awareness of the world's smaller, more manageable delights, it does not overwhelm or sour Dunn's attempt to emerge from the smolder and ruin of Different Hours. Local Visitations is likely one of Dunn's boldest and brightest books, suggesting that the resignation pervading Different Hours is only a temporary waiting room for those whose eyes are fixed on that "meaningful task waiting to be found."

I was first introduced to Stephen Dunn in college creative writing classes. I bought this collection first, and have read it over and over. When I have had close friends that appreciate the arts come into or leave my life, or go through a tough or introspective stage, I have passed on this collection to them--hopefully, to inspire them as it has me. Dunn has brilliant observations on the human condition, from the silly everyday things to the most life changing events that we all ultimately share. He is one of the few poets that I have read that can combine the headiness of abstract and philosophical ideas with descriptive and moving personal details to craft poems you will want to read many times throughout your life. Beautifully delicate, honest and thoughtful.

Having read most of Dunn's poetry, and in particular, having read this book several times, I find that Dunn is a writer I can always come back to. His style is unique, and always gets to the crux of what seems to drive human actions. Not only are his poems accessible and inspiring but they exemplify why I read poetry.

Whether you're a novice of poetry or the next "Great One," you'll connect with these poems by Dunn. Not only is he truly a master of the language in free verse form, but also a master of bringing any subject matter to life. He has an understanding beyond what many poets often do, but at the same time he communicates this understanding through very accessible and clear writing. I am always going back to this book of poetry by Dunn.

(in particular, be sure to read "The Routine Things Around the House" and "At the Smithville Methodist Church")

Peter Murphy's poems are haunting and funny by turns--and sometimes both at once. They demonstrate a mastery of condensation, pacing, and specificity. Stubborn Child tells the vivid story of a child shuttled from one household to another--and a self destructive man drinking, having sex with the wrong people, and finding his way out of dead end jobs to a complicated life in which he is a thoughtful teacher and a loving husband and father. In the vivid stories of what saves him, we get clues to what might save us as well--truth telling, respect, generosity, and humor.

Many people in the New Jersey area have heard of and known Peter E. Murphy and have looked hard for a collection of his work. Now, the looking has an end result. This is a fine overview of poems from various stages of the poet's life as a person and as an artist, exemplifying a wide array of roads to happiness. Of course, the happiness conveyed in the book has come with various prices, as only true happiness can. In all, Peter E. Murphy offers a poetic world of hope when misery and failure seems just as accessible.

There's no fluff poetry here. Mr. Murphy's words are as raw and thought provoking as poetry can get. The personal insights that he writes about made the corner of my mouth stretch to a smurk and made me mutter, "this is awesome." I couldn't stop reading, and I haven't read poetry since Shel Silversein.

I love Stephen Dunn's work for many reasons, for his clear, direct prose and his honesty about all subject matters. Circus of Needs embodies these reasons to the best of Dunn's abilities.

In this collection of poetry, there is a sense of sadness that is comforting. Dunn points out that life is not perfect, that all is not well; he speaks for the everyday, common man and acknowledges the beauty in our world that slips by unnoticed too often. The standout poem is "Instead of You," in which Dunn explains that "from the start all I wanted to explain was how things go wrong, how the heart's an empty place until it is filled, and how the darkness in forever waiting for its chance." The point is that Dunn is writing for us, the readers; he extracts and dissects subject matter, wanting to breathe a new life into the normal while examining it closely, like a butterfly. Although "there's no way to keep the ugliness out, ever," Dunn writes in an effort to understand what we all ignore, so that he can "pull you from the wreckage and kiss your bruises, so black and gold."

Every poem in this collection, from the aching "Sister" to the comical "Belly Dancer at the Hotel Jerome" to the lovely predictability of "Introduction to the 20th Century" brings fantasy and pleasure to the real. Dunn spins our boring reality into something intangible and surreal; he allows us to see with new eyes what might have been, what could be still. Circus of Needs is not his best collection (Between Angels gets my vote), but it is certainly unique and beautiful in its own right. From a lesser poet, this collection might be a pinnacle; from Dunn, it allows the reader to glimpse the distance he has traveled in his abilites and the possibilities open to him in the future.

This Book is about a king who lives in a castle. He has a baker called Adrian.The King always eats eggs. Adrian makes the king chicken eggs,goose eggs,duck eggs.Then he shouts More More More! The Next day he read in his Newspaper that a dodos egg was spotted on an island.So he told Adrian to prepare the boat.To get to The island.

I have such vivid memories of this episode. It's the best hunter episode there is, in my opinion. The rapist character, Lloyd Fredericks, played by frederick Coffin, is at once frightening, and pathetic.The opening scene of him in his car, listening to oldies, grabbing latex gloves out of the glove compartment is a compelling beginning.
The camera (cleverly used) follows him to the front door of his victims house, where we see his gloved hands open the door with a key..Interesting. Then once inside in the dark, while his unsuspecting victim is in the shower, we see him pull a stocking mask over his face, grotesquely distorting his features. This is a scary transformation to witness in real time, and, like a good movie, sets the scene in motion. Later in the episode, when we see Dee Dee on the phone with hunter, confirming that she is home safe, and alone, the camera cuts to Lloyd's creepy sheer, stocking masked face waiting quietly upstairs...Dee Dee shows incredible strength +cunning, as she traps the sadistic rapist, as he attempts to attack her again. The imagery, story line, woven 3 different ways, makes for exciting 80's television, and the bad guys smushed features beneath the tight stocking mask, remains the most shocking tv moment from my childhood.

A college creative writing teacher first introduced me to this book in 1997 and I have loved to visit it over years. Dunn writes in a way that is distinctly personal, humorous, sincere, and sometimes brutally honest. He is a gifted storyteller who is able to weave writing advice effortlessly in with his tales. I would recommend my "favorite" chapters, but feel like this is a book best discovered without someone else's prejudices. This book can be read straight through from cover to cover, or the reader can skip around and read based on a chapter heading that catches his/her interest. Pick up this book and you'll want to seek out the rest of Dunn's writing.