The Other Hand: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Stuart, Dabney

Poetry

Louisiana State Univ Pr

Narcissus Dreaming: Poems

LSU Press

The four sections of Dabney Stuart’s new book represent a progression toward release from self-preoccupation, both personal and cultural, and a growing intimation of acceptance of the world outside the self. Using language with elasticity and elegance, Stuart is engaged in serious play, usually on more than one level.His familiar wit and subtlety arise in a context of good humor and sadness, warmth and reserve. His subject are a deft blend of pop culture (baseball, the movies), family situations, and legends, some old (Hansel and Gretel), some invented (“The Harpist’s Dream”). His is by turns straightforward and surreal. In fact, Stuart’s skillful rendering of dream sequenced is one of the appealing dimension of this work.Stuart is concerned as well with awakenings and with transitions, sometimes intensified into transformations. In “Love Story,” for example, a physical injury becomes the way to talk of psychic development; after a dizzying performance by an unusual broken leg, the poem concludes,Relax said middle age when I woke up, Dreams are for those who never heal. We healed.The title poem is a fresh appearance of Narcissus―not a mere reworking of the legend, but an opening out of the present world through the possibilities of the old myth. At the close of the poem, Narcissus, who has been fishing without luck, pulls his reflection from the water:He lower sit into the boat, takes it upon himself, drenched, obscene, a perfectly imperfect fit, leaving the water imageless, opaque, other.Narcissus Dreaming is the work of a mature, accomplished artist, sensitive to psychological nuance and complexity.

Stories told from the point of view of Mark Random, a boy growing up in a Southern town, reveal the complexities of his interactions with his family and with Sweet Lucy Wine, a woman who lives with his family for a short time

Sweet Lucy Wine: Stories

United States

Dabney Stuart's subjects over the last thirty years are as disparate as the forms he chooses for them. His range includes baseball (and other games), geography, the movies, history, sideshows, domestic life - a world, in short, that is rich and various. Amid this exploration, Stuart has sustained certain concerns. The evasive and unsettling nature of family relationships threads consistently through the poems collected in Light Years: the poet uncovers deepening emotional and psychological complexities. There are celebrations of his children, his own sonship, his grandparents and grandchildren. Through it all, as he says in "The Opposite Field", the haunting "image / of [a] possible life / watches from a distance". Stuart rings evocative changes on recurrent image patterns, too. Birds are central to his work, for instance, and sing often; water flows frequently; music sounds in places as apparently incongruous as a row of cornstalks. Dreams, and dreaming, inform many poems, their precision of detail becoming part of the sharply observed physical world Stuart renders. Whatever else he is up to, Stuart always seeks the play in language, a source of delight and solace even in the most unlikely contexts. Indeed, as he writes in "Coming To", When he listens to his words play/ back, they shimmer oddly, on/ edge - a stranger talking - / as if they have gone/ through something he has/ no other knowledge of/ and brought it back: / his life.

Light Years: New and Selected Poems

Dabney Stuart’s subject over the last thirty years are as disparate as the forms he chooses for them. His range includes baseball (and other games), geography, the movies, history, sideshows, domestic life―a world, in short, that is rich and various.
Amid this exploration, Stuart has sustained certain concerns. The evasive and unsettling nature of family relationships threads consistently through the poems collected in Light Years; the poet uncovers deepening emotional and psychological complexities. There are celebrations of his children, his own sonship, his grandparents and grandchildren. Through it all as he says in “The Opposite Field,” the haunting image / of [a] possible life / watches from a distance.”
Stuart rings evocative changes on recurrent image patterns, too. Birds are central to his work, for instance, and sing often; water flows frequently; music sounds in places as apparently incongruous as a row of cornstalks. Dreams, and dreaming, inform many poems, their precision of detail becoming part of the sharply observed physical world Stuart renders.
Whatever else he is up to, Stuart always seeks the play in language, a source of delight and solace even in the most unlikely context. Indeed, as he writes in “Coming To,”
When he listens to his words play back, they shimmer oddly, on edge―a stranger talking― as if they have gone through something he has no other knowledge of and brought it back: 
his life.

From its haunted opening to the complex affirmation of its final lines, this profound collection by Dabney Stuart presents a palimpsest of the spirit in the modern age. With jagged syncopations, lyrical stop-time, and a kind of elegiac swing, these poems spiral through multiple dimensions of time, memory, and emotion - from post-World War II America to the South Pacific - evoking perspectives of the psyche as brooding and cryptic as the Antarctic. Long Gone nimbly weaves carnal and familial love, the search for lost innocence, and the epistemology of memory into moments of hallucinatory focus where insight comes - and goes - like light on water.

Long Gone: Poems

Louisiana State University Press

From its haunted opening to the complex affirmation of its final lines, this profound collection by Dabney Stuart presents a palimpsest of the spirit in the modern age. With jagged syncopations, lyrical stop-time, and a kind of elegiac swing, these poems spiral through multiple dimensions of time, memory, and emotion - from post-World War II America to the South Pacific - evoking perspectives of the psyche as brooding and cryptic as the Antarctic. Long Gone nimbly weaves carnal and familial love, the search for lost innocence, and the epistemology of memory into moments of hallucinatory focus where insight comes - and goes - like light on water.

Long Gone: Poems (Physics, Nuclear Physics and Cosmology)

Settlers: Poems

A collection of poems providing a commentry on the themes of exploration and discovery. Stuart approaches these themes from a variety of angles - historical, physical, familial and psychological - and on scales ranging from the observations of a grasshopper to plate tectonics.

Settlers, Dabney Stuart’s thirteenth collection of poems, is a passionate and innovative commentary on exploration and discovery. As the title suggests, the major themes of this work include beginnings in disparate but related areas―the historical, physical, geologic, familial, and psychological. Stuart embeds these rather large considerations in details ranging from tectonic plates and glaciers to the pterodactyl and the observations of a grasshopper. Family ancestors appear as well as writers from earlier centuries. In the effective “The Tapawera Raspberry Festival,” Stuart deftly combines predation, ritual celebration, competition, and joy in a festival set on the South Island of New Zealand.
Settlers’ theological implications become explicit in the final section, through the title poem, and more extensively in the long section entitled “God.” In this thoughtful sequence, Stuart struggles to understand God’s mystifying absence and presence. Simultaneously bewildered, curious, distressed, and delighted, these profoundly reflective poems achieve an understanding of God as “a name for everything timethriving.” 
Stuart’s love of language and playfulness as well as his affection for his subjects and their mysteries are part of the fabric of these poems. The affirmation of life in all its rich and various inception shines through every line of this exceptional work.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stuart, Dabney. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stuart, Dabney

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stuart, Dabney. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Other Hand: Poems

Narcissus Dreaming: Poems

Narcissus Dreaming: Poems

Sweet Lucy Wine: Stories

Light Years: New and Selected Poems

Light Years: New and Selected Poems

Long Gone: Poems

Long Gone: Poems (Physics, Nuclear Physics and Cosmology)

Settlers: Poems

Settlers: Poems