Mystery, So Long

By Stephen Dobyns and Cleo Qian

Book Overview

Thomas Lux has called Stephen Dobyns "one of the very finest poets writing in America today. His poems are brave, ravenous, intensely moving, and utterly his own." The poems in his new volume, Mystery, So Long, use both free verse and traditional forms to examine life's complications and peculiar joys, in language that varies from the staid to the hysteric and in situations ranging from the commonplace to the mythic. Humor, surprise, the absurd, and the ferocious are used as so many picks and shovels to further Dobyns's dark explorations in this powerful collection. From "Mystery, So Long" At first, it filled the space around us with holes, the mystery. It was scary. People fell through them. There goes Og, people might say. They sang hymns to the mystery. They pounded on drums. They fed the mystery both friends and strangers. It seemed a good idea. The mystery hungered for human flesh. Oh, implacable and mysterious mystery.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143034626
• ISBN13: 9780143034629
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Poets
• Length: 95 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Mystery So Long...How would you describe it?

Simply put, Stephen Dobyns is sassy, irreverant, honest, and appears to have had as much fun writing this collection of poems as I have had reading them. After hearing the poet at a reading last week, and enjoying this collection, I have already ordered "Velocities." It is impossible not to smile or even guffaw while reading Stephen Dobyns.

A Brutal Truth

I will not quote a selection of lines from Dobyns' work as I feel the title alone encapsulates the duality inherent in all of Dobyns' poetry, a duality he has sharpened to an even finer point with his present book, "Mystery, So Long". The title presents the reader with a seemingly comic quip disregarding mystery as surpassed like the exultant words of Little Caesar as he escapes from the cops-so long, suckers. But it is just this comedic stance that modulates with the empathetic and disarms the reader of any preconceived notions about the inaccessibility of poetry and in turn, the mystery of life that poetry wishes to acknowledge. So, with this offering, Dobyns invites the reader to explore the mystery not as a disjunctive enactment of emotion, a contemporary fashion that mumbles from one disjunctive moment to the next, but as, for the most part, a meditative narrative on the absurd and gritty moments, moments not acceptable as conversation at the dinner table, as they happen in the private bedrooms and bathrooms of our lives. And so, Dobyns serves us a distasteful moment from a comedic stance that he is somehow always able to digest into a brutal truth. I say brutal because these are the moments we would rather not talk about, moments of socially unacceptable events or thoughts that he is able to raise to a level that speaks to the importance of every moment to not understand the long mystery of life that we have not enough life to understand but to understand that nothing is to be overlooked if we are to understand, of life's mystery, the brilliancy of every moments' telling part. And so, Dobyns' book does not say "So Long, Mystery," but "Mystery, So Long," in affirmation of his continued effort to reach a more brutal truth, a fuller life.

A Must-Have Book for All Poetry Lovers

Whether you're new to poetry or a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, YOU WILLL NOT REGRET BUYING THIS BOOK! In fact, after finishing it for the first time, I immediately ordered copies for my closest poetry and non-poetry friends. And uniformly they report enjoying it, poem after sparkling poem. Moreover, if the world is just (though who's naïve enough to believe it is?), then Mystery, So Long will win at least the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, or the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. I claim this because this book is a seamless masterpiece of the noblest intent, achieving that oft-sought-but-rarely-found fusion of high ambition with artistic accomplishment. And, most amazingly, it does so from the book's preface (Jaime Sabines: "¡Bien te vaya, ladrón, con lo que robas a tu dolor y a tus amores!") to its epistemologically lucid final note: Was this the wisdom come to him at last? That nothing could rid him of his isolation His toys no longer hid what was there: himself And the night and the only entry into the night. In other words, line by line, across these seventy astonishing poems, Dobyns sweats and strains to gift his readers with essential meaning (i.e. "Should I regret my death if it is inevitable? / Should I regret my life if it is always passing? / How to be both arrow and bow.") And like an ascetic, he has stripped bare each poem in the collection, thereby cleansing it of any traces of self-aggrandizement or ornamentation. In this way, he generously offers to us the struggle to live with clear vision (i.e. "So often in this world what is rejected / crawls back to the heart, what is cast off / again crowds the brain"), even though some of us might prefer the cozy lair of our delusions.... To achieve his aims, Dobyns writes with bold language, rich metaphors, good pace, trenchant wit, and a tender heart. Underpinning these is always his fierce intelligence, and the result is a poetry that is endlessly re-readable. For, technical excellence aside, the poems exemplify the highest service of poetry: the dogged, selfless pursuit of our deepest questions about the human condition. In this sense, I don't feel hyperbolic in locating this book's ambition alongside Milton's Paradise Lost or Dante's Inferno; Dobyns, too, in his humble but powerful way is thrashing about in language to claw and scratch for moral meaning. More specifically, Mystery, So Long asks questions such as, What is belief?, What is art?, What is grief?, Why does forgetfulness exist? What are the origins of our myths?, and, What's the purpose of mystery? In summary, throughout the book, the poems are masterfully written and arranged, moving as rewardingly through a personal maturation as they do through received forms such as the sonnet and villanelle. So if you're looking for a book loaded with humor, insight, force, and humanity, then you've found the perfect purchase for your next opportunity to read.

Another Meditative Mood

Usually, Stephen Dobyns is at his best when writing in a meditative mood. One thinks immediately of the character of Heart from PALLBEARER''S ENVYING THE ONE WHO RIDES, of the narrative interpretations of the paintings of Balthus from THE BALTHUS POEMS, or most recently, of the prose constructions of THE PORCUPINE'S KISSES. MYSTERY, SO LONG, Dobyns' twelve volume, is not (at least explicitly anyway), that kind of book. Which is not to say, however, that it's not without its own meditations. Most notably, MYSTERY'S energy and success stem from the constant interplay between formal and free verse, between Biblical and other ancient mythologies. Some of Dobyns best poems can be found in these pages, too: "The Exegencies of Art," "Functional Forgetting," "The Mercy of Lazarus." Notice how Dobyns controls the penultimate six lines of "Poem Ending with a Line by Su Tung-Po," a sonnet: Ahead waits a dark night with a single star. Behind extends the long view down the mountain. Should I regret my death if it is inevitable? Should I regret my lift if it is always passing? How to be both arrow and bow. Released, the arrow flies past the dead oak at the end of the path. 'One must make certain the mind never clings.' Those lines, like many in this volume, read as if scripted in stone. All told, this is an outstanding effort from one of America's finest poets. And, like many good books, its grandeur begins with its title. There'a playfullness at work: Is it that the mysteries of human experience are inexplicable, and meant to endure? Or, is the book instead an act of resignation, a giving in to such mysteries? Is it both? Here's where we find Dobyns once again in a meditative mood: Read it to find out.