Q&A with writer Stephen Kuusisto

by Lawrence Sumulong

The S&B did an e-mail interview with writer and disability activist Stephen Kuusisto, who will be on campus Tuesday as part of the Writers @ Grinnell series and Disability Awareness Week. Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is the author of the memoir Planet of the Blind and the poetry collection Only Bread, Only Light. He will read from his latest work, Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. Learn more about Kuusisto from this week's S&B article (PDF), Kuusisto's Web site and his blog.

In regards to your poetry and your prose, who are some of the writers that have helped hone your voice and in what ways have they influenced you?

I began reading poetry when I was a high school student. A friend loaned me a copy of an anthology of contemporary American poetry edited by Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, called Naked Poetry. I discovered Kenneth Rexroth's poetry in that book, along with work by Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin and James Wright, just to name a few of the amazing poets who were becoming important in American letters in the sixties and seventies. I was absolutely infatuated by the beauty and intelligence of contemporary poetry and I think that this discovery helped to save my life. I was anorexic and very depressed about my circumstances as a blind teenager attending a mediocre rural high school. Poetry dazzled, affirmed, insinuated and was politically and intellectually risky. I wanted to join the dialogue.

You have appeared in numerous anthologies, publications, and T.V. shows; are you conveying the same message across different media? To clarify, does a poem of yours appearing in The New York Times Magazine differ from your personal appearance on a show such as Oprah in regards to the convictions you are conveying? Furthermore, are there any concerns when you decide to involve yourself in various modes of public perception?

This is an excellent question. I try to remain the same thinker in all the various forms of communication one uses. On Oprah I talked at some length about the history of people with disabilities in the U.S.; in poetry I also talk about this history, as in the poem "Learning Braille at 39" or "Only Bread, Only Light." I've found lately that blogging has allowed me space to write editorials about disability and contemporary culture in a timely way, and I value that new freedom.

I was talking to Professor Ralph Savarese about your work, and he mentioned how your exquisite attention to language seemingly transforms, like a work of alchemy, prose into something closer to poetry. With that in mind, how has your background in poetry spilled into the structure of the memoir and creative nonfiction?

I learned how to write nonfiction largely from the point of view of a poet. In general, poets love language—its compression, imagery, sweetness, muscularity, energy and musicality. While prose writers often admire these things as well, very often a fiction or nonfiction writer will be thinking ahead about the narrative arc of her or his story. Poets tend to think word by word, line by line, like the old children's song about watering the garden: inch by inch, row by row. So I simply began writing true stories by using the poet's love of language as my essential building block. I tend to find out where I'm going with the story only after I've enjoyed putting the images and sounds on the page. As the poet Theodore Roethke said, "I learn by going where I have to go."

Between the walking tour of Grinnell College's campus, your reading and class visitations, your upcoming Writers @ Grinnell appearance seems to be one of the most involved and invested presentations to date. Dovetailing with Disability Awareness Week, what is the message that you are bringing to the college? How do you plan to convey it through each individual event?

I think that having a message is sometimes really a matter of being open to hearing the people in the local community. I've long been fascinated by the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who as you know was a coast to coast mover and shaker in the civil rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s. He would never give a talk in a city or town until he'd heard the local people either in a church or a community center. I think that's crucial. You may have some pre-formed and seemingly important ideas, but they can't be useful unless you take the time to know what the people around you are thinking. So at Grinnell I will endeavor to learn from students, faculty and staff, and I'll try to shape what I have to say about disability and higher education in accordance with local needs. Obviously talking about poetry and literature can be more from the world of the writer, though it can be argued that poetry is also a community activity.