“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

Happy to report that The Laughing Monkeys of Gravity has been reprinted by Mercer University Press. Also, The Flagrant Dead, a new volume, was released by Mercer University Press in March 2007. To order these books please click on the links on this page.

Here's a link (see below) to an album of the AWP Tribute to Louis Simpson that took place on Saturday, February 2, 2008. Fellow panelists included Peter Stitt, Peter Makuck, Mark Jarman, and Michael Waters. Louis Simpson was present and read his poetry. http://picasaweb.google.com/sebluestone

At the Georgia Writers Association annual meeting, on June 7, 2008, I was pleased to be this year’s recipient of the Taran Memorial Prize for The Flagrant Dead. And this past summer, 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.

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