Kevin Stein - Namesake Post

Kevin Stein (1954 - Present)



Kevin Stein is an English professor and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.  He was named Illinois Poet Laureate in 2003 and is known for his funny, fluid and insightful poetry.

Arts of Joy

Now I have the Great Crested Flycatcher
amidst my Red Delicious, the tree's
spindly arm so freighted with apples
it sags under the bird's bird-weight
then springs at his departure
like the board just after a diver's flung up
and gone.  Weep weep weep, he trills
from the overgrown fence row,
his three notes so laden with gravity
I wonder is this song or his lament,
one wing among the green going going?

And that, my friends, is how reason
insinuates its bone lonely self
among the arts of joy -- the least of which
is knowing when to snip the string
that tethers us, our sky blue why.

The bird's after-image is more than
I can take, really, more than I can ask
of Wednesday's usual desultory coffers,
high noon offering its unspent zenith.
I want to say there's absolutely nothing
like this vision of bird and apples. I want
to say absolutely nothing else gives
of wings and fruit. Then I think of
nights my wife rose flushed above me --
this, the only store I put in absolutes.


I absolutely love this poem because it is beautifully descriptive while at the same time neither overly complex nor absolutely negative.  I feel like there are too many poems out there that bring the distress and agony out of people's lives and although they teach great lessons, they are not always the most enjoyable to read.  Arts of Joy, however, turns that notion around and speaks of an image so delightful, bright and quiet (I like peace and quiet) with words so true that it improves my mood.  This poem describes one of the many reasons why I love living in this world.  All of the naturally beautiful occurrences that happen around me are things that I keep in my mind and so does Kevin Stein.  There is not a complex rhyme scheme and the lines are not in perfect order.  This poem focuses on optimism and I love to see that.  I especially love the last sentence because I can relate to that feeling of when another person has such strong emotions for you that they flush.  It is a feeling of happiness that does not come along very often and it is something that makes life great.  Kevin Stein's eloquence in the description of something so simple, yet so real is one aspect of poetry I like to see and emulate.