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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Stephen Dunn. He has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing.\\u200b Dunn's books of poetry include Lines of Defense (W. W. Norton, 2014); Different Hours (2000); Local Time (1986); and Looking For Holes In the Ceiling (1974). Source

This episode includes a reading of his poem, "Sweetness". See more of his work in our Get Lit Anthology.

"Sweetness"

Just when it has seemed I couldn\\u2019t bear\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0one more friend\\xa0 \\xa0

waking with a tumor, one more maniac\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0has come\\xa0 \\xa0

and changed nothing in the world\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

except the way I stumbled through it,\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0for a while lost\\xa0 \\xa0

in the ignorance of loving\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

someone or something, the world shrunk\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0to mouth-size,\\xa0 \\xa0

hand-size, and never seeming small.\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

I acknowledge there is no sweetness\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0that doesn\\u2019t leave a stain,\\xa0 \\xa0

no sweetness that\\u2019s ever sufficiently sweet ....\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

Tonight a friend called to say his lover\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0was killed in a car\\xa0 \\xa0

he was driving. His voice was low\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

and guttural, he repeated what he needed\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0to repeat, and I repeated\\xa0 \\xa0

the one or two words we have for such grief\\xa0 \\xa0\\xa0

\\xa0

until we were speaking only in tones.\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0Often a sweetness comes\\xa0 \\xa0

as if on loan, stays just long enough\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

to make sense of what it means to be alive,\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0then returns to its dark\\xa0 \\xa0

source. As for me, I don\\u2019t care\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0

where it\\u2019s been, or what bitter road\\xa0 \\xa0

\\xa0 \\xa0it\\u2019s traveled\\xa0 \\xa0

to come so far, to taste so good.

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