Loud Music

The work of late 20th century poet Stephen Dobyns does not shy away from humor or wit. His poems often engage everyday topics, such as listening to music or having a cup of coffee, using these mundane starting points to leap into the abstract world of philosophy. Published in 1987 in Dobyns’s third collection of poetry Cemetery Nights, “Loud Music” is a good example of this pattern, opening with an image of a stepfather and stepdaughter dancing around to music, and then quickly transitioning into existential questions of identity.

Poet Biography

Stephen Dobyns was born in 1941 in Orange, New Jersey, a township on the outskirts of Newark. His family moved several times throughout his childhood, and he lived in many states including Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He attended Shimer College in Illinois and earned his bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University in Michigan. Dobyns received his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1967. Dobyns has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News and as a teacher of poetry at several universities, including Sarah Lawrence College, Warren Wilson College, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

Dobyns has published over a dozen collections of poetry and 20 novels after breaking onto the poetry scene in 1972 with the publication of his first collection of poems, Concurring Beasts, which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets.