Poetry that seeks the undying connection between past and present


“Poem after poem [in The Flagrant Dead] is strange–and original and beautiful–whether translations or dramatic speeches, whether of love or machinery, or old technologies, or outrageous lists, whether influenced by Robert Browning or Hart Crane. We have, in our language, poems of passion and poems of the mind, but they are not too often combined. Bluestone has found a way to combine them. He is a steady student of our culture, as he is of our history. He misses nothing."

–Gerald Stern

“Stephen Bluestone’s new book, The Flagrant Dead, has a startling and I think incontrovertible idea: the dead are with us, whether it be the pattern of the carpet in a mosque or 'the look in the eye of a young girl listening.' Whatever has happened must still be happening–the making of a great automobile, the Maserati, and the ingenuity of the 'owner-manager' of the Rose Theater in March 1598, who brought dead scenes to life. In Bluestone’s poetry the plays of Ben Jonson and the escapades of Harpo Marx go on forever. The Flagrant Dead is a delightful and astonishing book."

                                                                      –Louis Simpson

In The Flagrant Dead, the reader will find poems filled with rich, broad vocabularies, fascinating details, engaging characters, energy and breath, attention and focus, the struggles of divinity, both dread and joyful reflections on the human among space and history, motion and time. Stephen Bluestone’s voice is rapt, witty, questing, informed, his talent reaching its zenith in this book.

–Pattiann Rogers

–Kelly Cherry

Stephen Bluestone is a poet of enormous range and a passionate imagination. The Flagrant Dead (a wonderful oxymoron!) is a stunning and accomplished book. Read it!

–Thomas Lux

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