Attendant Surprise: An Interview with Stephen Kuusisto
By Lia Purpura (originally published in The Georgia Review)
This interview took place at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, on 8 November 2007, before Kuusisto read as part of the Modern Masters Reading Series. I had just finished Eavesdropping and was renewed by Steve’s approach to the memoir; to my mind, he had created a form that was fresh, lyrical, and flexible enough to move deftly through well-built scenes without sacrificing an essentially poetic stance. Although his approach to memoir in Eavesdropping is not wholly unlike that of Planet of the Blind, I felt that in some profound ways Steve had advanced and deepened the form. When Steve arrived at Loyola on 7 November, our informal conversation took flight as we traded enthusiasms for new books we had read, talked about teaching at the University of Iowa and elsewhere, and discussed the dual-genre life we share as poet-essayists. Read on…
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Professor Stephen Kuusisto is the author of “Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening” and the acclaimed memoir “Planet of the Blind”, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”. His second collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press, “Letters to Borges“, is scheduled for release in February 2013. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled What a Dog Can Do. Steve speaks widely on diversity, disability, education, and public policy. www.stephenkuusisto.com, www.planet-of-the-blind.com
Planet of the Blind 