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Oh abstractions are just abstract until they have an ache in them.

Stephen Dunn

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Stephen Dunn
Age: 81 †
Born: 1939
Born: June 24
Died: 2021
Died: June 24
Engineer
Poet
Queens
New York
Abstractions
Ache
Abstraction
Abstract

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I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth.
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I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.
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Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can.
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I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.
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Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.
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exaggerated sunsets / splashed with rain, odd collisions / of roots, animals, seeds. / I didn't like a thing I saw, / so much effort to be strange.
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There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.
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A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one's smallness in the world.
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