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    Letters to Borges
    Letters to Borges
    Letters to Borges
    Ebook110 pages43 minutes

    Letters to Borges

    By Stephen Kuusisto

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    About this ebook

  • Kuusisto's poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Utne Reader, and Poetry Magazine.
  • His memoir, Planet of the Blind, was a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and sold over 50,000 copies
  • Kuusisto's work has been translated into a dozen languages (including Finnish!)
  • Kuusisto is a popular speaker and disability activist, focusing specifically on blindness mobility.
  • Has been a guest on Oprah, Dateline, Talk of the Nation
  • Graduated from and teaches at Iowa Writers' Workshop
  • W.S. Merwin loves this guy!
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateApr 23, 2013
    ISBN9781619320253
    Letters to Borges
    Author

    Stephen Kuusisto

    Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a professorship in the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.

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      Book preview

      Letters to Borges - Stephen Kuusisto

      1

      Now is it a tree or a god there, showing through the rusted gate?

      JORGE LUIS BORGES

      (TRANSLATED BY W.S. MERWIN)

      Emily Dickinson and the Ophthalmoscope

      1

      A bird, dun-colored and nearly bald, flits above the retina and vanishes

      Like a Calvinist toy—a straw doll lost in snow.

      I am a girl going blind, she thinks. "Soon I will be dark as a hat

      Or something we might lace."

      Of talk there is no use—

      The tongue itself is blanked,

      One might speak to sleeves

      Or the buttons of Father’s shirt.

      Still the bird returns

      And walks across the eye

      Like Milton’s Eve, dream-walking.

      To think what I may tell it, she thinks. "That’s the trick—

      A small blind wisdom as winter ends."

      She sees the bird already knows:

      It bathes itself,

      Then tucks to clean its wings.

      My cocoon tightens, colors tease,

      I am feeling for the air;

      A dim capacity for wings.

      2

      To be blind is the end of autumn.

      Watch as the afternoon falls like seeds;

      Keep a locket; press the sights.

      The Sun kept setting—setting—still

      No Hue of Afternoon—

      Upon the Village I perceived—

      From House to House ‘twas Noon—

      The Dusk kept dropping—dropping—still

      No Dew upon the Grass—

      But only on my Forehead stopped—

      And wandered in my Face—

      What medicine for this?

      Earthen face and clay eyes.

      3

      I see the doctor’s skill

      Is made of repetition;

      Lens after lens he tries;

      But strangest

      Is a difference.

      He sees the planet rise

      In the blank sky of faith,

      My eye,

      Too blind, he says, for day

      But equal to twilight.

      He looks long

      Where nothing moves

      But inscape blood

      Those hairs of anemone,

      Garnet script,

      Mine alone.

      I won’t go blind,

      He says,

      Though much will be gained

      Or lost

      By thinking so.

      Home again at nightfall;

      The cemetery grass

      Fills with fireflies—

      And as he promised

      I alone see

      How, giddy with parturition,

      They circle

      Amid the graves.

      Write It Down

      for James Crenner

      The last crickets sing

      Of synesthesia:

      Leg on leg,

      Their wings

      Cold as glass.

      My dear friend Sisi

      From Finland

      Tells me

      The crickets

      Prepare winter

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