Planet of the Blind
Planet of the Blind[1] is the first of Kuusisto’s two memoirs. It was published in 1998 by Dial Press and quickly became a
New York Times "Notable Book of the Year".
Planet of the Blind tracks Kuusisto’s life from a fervent youth into his adulthood as a poet and writer. As a youth, Kussisto was willing to climb trees, ride a bike and submit himself to perils that tested his visual impairment. Kuusisto admits that his family was unprepared to deal with his disability. In
Planet of the Blind he writes “There are no books about blind children or how to bring them up, no associations of parents or support materials, at least not in rural New Hampshire. Instead there are assumptions: Blindness is a profound misfortune, a calamity really, for ordinary life can’t accommodate it.” [2] (p. 13) Because of the stigma attached to disability, Kuusisto’s parents enrolled him into public school (as opposed to a school for the blind) against the advice of officials. As an adult, Kuusisto traveled, went bird watching, and eventually became a published poet and writer. Of
Planet of the Blind, Donna Seaman of
Booklist Magazines writes "... as Kuusisto muses on how blindness is perceived by the sighted world and relates his fearsome and wonderful adventures before and after he finally teamed up with a guide dog, his incredible resolve, good humor, and irrepressible love for life remind us of the awesome power of the imagination, and the true meaning of vision."[3]
Only Bread Only Light
Only Bread Only Light is Stephen Kuusisto’s collection of poetry published in 2000. The cover displays Max Beckmann's painting Still Life with Fallen Candles, 1929.[4] It could be argued that the fallen candles are representative of Kuusisto’s blindness. Kuusisto writes, "I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope, my impressions of the world are at once beautiful and largely useless." In
Only Bread Only Light, Kuusisto contradicts poetry’s traditional reliance on visual imagery and faces readers with multiple levels of rich sensual imagery, particularly sound imagery, to cultivate a new world of poetic “listeners”. In Beth L. Virtanen’s review of Only Bread Only Light entitled
Stephen Kuusisto's Work Delights and Surprises[5] she writes “He speaks unabashedly about being blind, about love, about poetry, about dependence on a dog, about finding beauty in surprising places.”
Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening
Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening is Stephen Kuusisto’s second memoir to date, published in 2006. Written in the form of linked essays, Kuusisto offers his story of living a life by ear, developing an aural landscape so that he hears “layers of space” rather than sees them...Reed Elsevier of Publisher’s Weekly contends: “A crowd is not a crowd to him; instead it is a series of sound points, indicating space, pace, rhythm and mood” --and of overhearing the world taking place about him. Eavesdropping becomes an art for Kuusisto, the attentive, active listener and keen observer that he is, and the memoir is composed of countless anecdotes recounting his experiences doing just that. He discusses his childhood and reveals that he was more of a recluse, his constant companion being music...from the rhythm of the wind, to the sound of trees tapping on windows, to the song of birds, to the Vitrola he discovers in his grandmother’s attic...but particularly the sounds of Enrico Caruso, a famous Italian tenor. Kuusisto also confides that his grandmother was his first “guru of listening”. Donna Seaman of Booklist writes of his memoir:
“As Kuusisto recounts further seminal moments and improbable adventures, he presents exquisitely rendered soundscapes that capture aspects of the world most of us barely register, from the storm of traffic to the cacophony of our myriad machines to the songs of trees. As he goes "sight-seeing by ear" in places as diverse as Iceland and Venice, and celebrates the music and literature that sustain him, Kuusisto foregrounds the aural realm and evinces great tenacity and trust in his candid tales of life as an acute and contemplative listener in a loud and hectic world.”
