{"product_id":"close-escapes","title":"Close Escapes","description":"Navigating a sightless world with intelligence and dark humor, Close Escapes searches for an answer to our earthly existence by way of visions only the blind can see.\n“Never 'in' time,\" Stephen Kuusisto's third poetry collection, Close Escapes, moves through a river of memory. In one poem, Kuusisto is “the blind kid again,\" pressing his finger to a cornered spider. In another, he walks down a harbor in Helsinki, “still twenty-three among the Baltic gulls.\" Adrift in time and place—Tallinn, New York, a Velamo monastery—our anchor is the poet, navigating a sightless world with intelligence and dark humor. As Kuusisto moves forward through meditations on beauty, “dark joy,\" loss, aging, and the afterlife, he also reaches back, talking to writers, musicians, and thinkers of the past—Orwell, Marvin Bell, Salvatore Quasimodo. In one scene, Kuusisto ponders death, asking Bach to “Tell [him] of the galant flourishes \/ As we leave this life.\" Readers, alongside Kuusisto, are left reaching for that “frail wisdom,\" for an answer to the question of our earthly existence. We find tenderness in our human connections, both lasting and fleeting, sometimes gone. We drift onward, learning to find “music in human silence.\"\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 1556596898\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: DBV.1556596898.G\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Kuusisto, Stephen\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly!  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Dream Books Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41584368091194,"sku":"DBV.1556596898.G","price":8.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/6011\/0138\/files\/1556596898-0.jpg?v=1786246880","url":"https:\/\/shop.dreambooksco.com\/products\/close-escapes","provider":"Dream Books Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}