“Stephen Bluestone’s poems do miraculous things, by force of language directed through his fierce peculiar rhythm; best, they preserve what they value. Because our civilization loves speed, change, loss, and forgetfulness, a poet’s obligation is also a poet’s opportunity–to hold and keep, to make a stillness despite noise–to praise, to celebrate, and to enact endurance. In Stephen Bluestone’s old opera singers, in his ‘afternoon/on its way into history,’ and in his recovered ‘Circumstance of the Porch,’ he provides what the age never demands but deeply requires.”
                                                                                                 –Donald Hall

“‘So forgive me–you will–but make it new, original, your own,/ no matter how strange or beautiful, or far from home,’ advised Robert Hayden in a poem of Stephen Bluestone’s.  And he did. Poem after poem [in The Flagrant Dead] is strange–and original and beautiful–whether translations or dramatic speeches, whether of love or machinery, or old technologies, or outrageous lists, whether influenced by Robert Browning or Hart Crane. We have, in our language, poems of passion and poems of the mind, but they are not too often combined. Bluestone has found a way to combine them. He is a steady student of our culture, as he is of our history. He misses nothing.”
                                                                        –Gerald Stern

“Stephen Bluestone’s new book, The Flagrant Dead, has a startling and I think incontrovertible idea: the dead are with us, whether it be the pattern of the carpet in a mosque or ‘the look in the eye of a young girl listening.’ Whatever has happened must still be happening–the making of a great automobile, the Maserati, and the ingenuity of the ‘owner-manager’ of the Rose Theater in March 1598, who brought dead scenes to life. In Bluestone’s poetry the plays of Ben Jonson and the escapades of Harpo Marx go on forever. The Flagrant Dead is a delightful and astonishing book.”
                                                                      –Louis Simpson

ANNOUNCEMENTS

On May 30, 2009 a celebration of Walt Whitman’s 190^th birthday took place at the Composition Gallery in Atlanta. I was privileged to be one of the twenty-five Atlanta poets to participate in a reading of “Song of Myself,” which took three hours. Here’s a link to a wonderful slide show created by Cleo Creech (one of the readers) of that event: http://cleocreech.com/?p=92.

See Menu on this page for an addition to the Web site, entitled "Art Gallery." The art  posted is a selection of work from an exhibition entitled "Ut Pictura Poesis" [as in painting so in poetry] that took place at the Hardman Hall Art Gallery on the Mercer University main campus from 23 January 2009 to 6 February 2009. The show featured the work of approximately thirty Mercer students in painting, print making, and digital imaging in response to my poetry. On the "Art Gallery" page texts of the interpreted poems are linked with the art work.

Here's a link to an album of the 2008 AWP Tribute to Louis Simpson: http://picasaweb.google.com/sebluestone/LouisSimpsonTributeAWP2008#. Fellow panelists included Peter Stitt, Peter Makuck, Mark Jarman, and Michael Waters. Louis Simpson was present and read his poetry. The "Tribute to Louis Simpson" panel has been selected by AWP for its digital archives.

Other notes. In June 2009 I gave a lecture ("On Translating the Poetry of Mallarme") and a poetry reading at Temple University. In December 2009 my new version of Psalm 104 ("I Sing of Light"), set by Curtis Bryant, will be performed at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta.

At the Georgia Writers Association 2008 annual meeting I received the Taran Memorial Prize for The Flagrant Dead. Last summer (2008) at the Charles Street Synagogue in NYC, I read my new version of “Adon Olam” with Andy Statman performing on clarinet. I look forward to future performances with Statman.

Happy to report that The Laughing Monkeys of Gravity (1995) has been reprinted by Mercer University Press. To order this book, as well as The Flagrant Dead, please click on the links on this page. 

Many thanks to Keith Bluestone, Jerome Gratigny, and Robert Allen  for their work in
designing and maintaining this Web site.