Gorging on Sound: Stephen Kuusisto’s Auditory Poetic Imagination

Review of Stephen Kuusisto, Only Bread, Only Light

by Mathilda Stock

What does it mean to write poetry without vision? Stephen Kuusisto’s collection, Only Bread, Only Light (2001) is an ode to seeing without sight and to envisioning spaces when vision falters and only light and shadow are left. The collection is a tacit exploration of the visuality of auditory and sensory experience, both within the external world and within the practice of poetry. Kuusisto’s auditory sensibility informs his subjective experiences of vision loss, offering readers a glimpse into alternative modes envisioning poetry and configuring life.

The work thematizes the experiences of vision loss, drawing attention to displaced vision through striking language. In four sections, Kuusisto deftly weaves together classical myth and Finnish landscapes with everyday subjects close to the heart: dedications to his guide dog, reflections on learning to read braille at age thirty-nine, and meditations on a childhood creasing under the pressure of decaying vision. This interest in classical myth, Finnish landscapes, and the beauty in the mundane informs questions of life and being—especially without sight. Kuusisto’s poetic imagination culminates in an invitation to the reader to join the poet in considering an alternative mode of vision an imaginative inner vision stimulated through poetic sound.

As “Seven Prayers” states, “It’s the rapture of looking / That gives us want.” This striking use of “rapture” engenders and implies an overwhelming emotional force that lifts away vision, leaving a lack—or, indeed, a want. The first-person plural pronoun implicates readers, abstracting our vision, too. Thereby, a collective want is crafted, and a visionary desire arises.

In the title poem of the collection, Kuusisto speaks to the fulfillment of this want. “At times the blind see light, / And that moment is the Sistine ceiling, / Grace among buildings” (“Only Bread, Only Light”). This light flashes from other poems, which focus on auditory stimulation as a prosthetic for vision. Contrastingly, this poem strips the senses until only the scent of bread and the glimmering of light remain. The poem’s incandescent Sistine ceiling alleviates the visual want, offering a transcendent moment of a widened scope of sensory experience. As the light filters through, the world around the speaker fades away and only the serene experience of the wafting scent of bread and luminescent visual perception remain—a moment of grace in a tenebrous, bustling city.

This luminous flash within city streets is echoed in “Accomplice,” as well:

It was in the nature of things
That I couldn’t see. The nature of things
That the magpie should watch me. Perpetual strangers
Touch my sleeves,
The steel light of August
Draws me, affirming
Over brilliant and terrible streets,
And the bird looks on—

This poem takes on a more dismal modality; however, watchful birds emerge here as an important motif. Perhaps modelling the freedom and keen eyesight inaccessible to the speaker themselves, birds are a motif flitting through the whole collection.

Much of the collection, however, lingers on the other side of this want, where visual lack fulfilled only by auditory stimulation. “Open Window” is representative:

Atlas steals the apple of Hesperides,
Runs to the tall grass
Where he gorges unobserved.
Who would say that appetite
Is not of the ear?

Such gorging of sound and craving for it is central to Kuusisto’s collection. Placing his work in conversation with the classical tradition, Kuussito offers a palpable commentary on poetic consumption, alongside his meditations on sensory want. Who is to say that poetic appetite is not also of the ear?

This aural desire carries on in poems such as “Descant on Climbing and Descending Stairs:”

I was listening. My job was to keep track of sounds. Maybe this had to do with my failing eyesight. Maybe not. I was slipping down the throat of life. I was caught trying to hear the viscera of things…

The poem continues, “sound, like love, can be sudden and threatening.” This poem draws out the dual nature of any grand sensory and human experience as simultaneously stupendous and frightening. Perhaps it speaks to the sublime waiting to be uncovered under the surface of sensory stimulations.

As in “Open Window,” Kuusisto merges aural desire with poetic appetite in “At the Woods’ Edge.” In this work, he engages the creative process, writing on inspiration:

As I get older
The incidental lyric
Slips through the dark trees,
But honestly I can’t tell
What it means—

Here, Kuusisto transforms being into a caliginous forest, a dual symbol of the mind and vision. Through the thicket, lyrics slip like visionary streams of light, engendering mysterious poetic influence. Light echoes like sound through the somber wood of the mind, inciting inspiration.

Kuusisto’s collection ends with “Night Seasons,” perhaps one of the strongest pieces in the collection. The poem follows a blind speaker who listens to books on “the Kurzweil Scanner; / An electronic reader / For the blind.” The final stanza reads:

I’m the fool
Of the night seasons,
Reading anything, anything.
When daylight comes
And you see me on the street
Or standing for the bus,
Think of the Greek term
Entelechy
Word for soul and body
Constructing each other
After dark.

Here again, Kuusisto engages the motif of poetic—or literary—consumption and eclipsed light. Under the veil of the night, the speaker awakens, being “the fool / Of the night seasons,” but also reigning over them, unobstructedly embarking on a journey of consumption. Perhaps it is this consumption which fulfills the want of “Seven Prayers;” a means of self-definition and self-construction in the safety and solitude of the dark where only some can read. Indeed, this poem follows in the tradition of the blanket of night as a time for alternative visions at large. It is a powerful and empowering counterbalance to the version of the speaker visible in daylight; the night seasons level the playing field. They are the realm of alternative experiences and appetites that Kuusisto’s poetry invites us to explore.

With Only Bread, Only Light, Stephen Kuusisto proffers a window into blind life, provoking us too to consider, cherish, and seek out auditory stimulation. Birds soar through the collection and between and within the lines of Kuusisto’s imagination. Think of these birds as an invitation to listen and to meditate beyond these pages. Kuusisto’s collection reminds us that the world around us is alive not only when it is visible.

Works Cited

Kuusisto, Stephen. Only Bread, Only Light. Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

Mathilda Stock grew up in Toronto, Ontario. She is completing her honours English degree at McGill University and serving as the social media coordinator of the Montreal Prize.

17 January 2025