Stephen Kuusisto

A haunting, brilliantly imagined memoir about coming to terms with near-blindness, this is the story of a 'lost man with a speck of something like seeing.' Born prematurely, Stephen Kuusisto has been fractionally sighted since a post-natal operation severely damaged his retinas. Yet he grew up pretending he could see. Planet of the Blind tells his story - the years of a lonely childhood spent behind bottle-lens glasses, the consuming fear of ridicule and derision, the struggle through college that brings him from obesity to anorexia. With his nose pressed into the spine of a book in furious attempts to read, riding a bicycle at insane speeds, never truly knowing the face of his first lover, he stumbles through half a lifetime enraged and mortified. This is the record of a handicapped life; but it is also an extraordinary literary achievement. Kuusisto has managed to translate his opaque, kaleidoscopic world of shape and colour into poetic and luminous prose. Planet of the Blind conveys life as it is lived by one whose visual impressions are 'at once beautiful and largely useless', and for whom normality is continuously transformed by his blindness into an intense aesthetic experience.

Planet of the Blind

A blind poet describes his relationship with his first guide dog and how it changed his life and gave him a newfound appreciation for travel and independence.

a poet's journey

Have dog, will travel

In a lyrical love letter to guide dogs everywhere, a blind poet shares his delightful story of how a guide dog changed his life and helped him discover a newfound appreciation for travel and independence. Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind—but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of thirty-eight, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work. This is how he found himself at Guiding Eyes, paired with a Labrador named Corky. In this vivid and lyrical memoir, Stephen Kuusisto recounts how an incredible partnership with a guide dog changed his life and the heart-stopping, wondrous adventure that began for him in midlife. Profound and deeply moving, this is a spiritual journey, the story of discovering that life with a guide dog is both a method and a state of mind.

A Poet's Journey

Have Dog, Will Travel

"The world is a surreal pageant," writes Stephen Kuusisto. "Ahead of me the shapes and colors suggest the sails of Tristan's ship or an elephant's ear floating in air, though in reality it is a middle-aged man in a London Fog rain coat which billows behind him in the April wind." So begins Kuusisto's memoir, Planet of the Blind, a journey through the kaleidoscope geography of the partially-sighted, where everyday encounters become revelations, struggles, or simple triumphs. Not fully blind, not fully sighted, the author lives in what he describes as "the customs-house of the blind", a midway point between vision and blindness that makes possible his unique perception of the world. In this singular memoir, Kuusisto charts the years of a childhood spent behind bottle-lens glasses trying to pass as a normal boy, the depression that brought him from obesity to anorexia, the struggle through high school, college, first love, and sex. Ridiculed by his classmates, his parents in denial, here is the story of a man caught in a perilous world with no one to trust--until a devastating accident forces him to accept his own disability and place his confidence in the one relationship that can reconnect him to the world--the relationship with his guide dog, a golden Labrador retriever named Corky. With Corky at his side, Kuusisto is again awakened to his abilities, his voice as a writer and his own particular place in the world around him. Written with all the emotional precision of poetry, Kuusisto's evocative memoir explores the painful irony of a visually sensitive individual--in love with reading, painting, and the everyday images of the natural world--faced with his gradual descent into blindness. Folded into his own experience is the rich folklore the phenomenon of blindness has inspired throughout history and legend.

A Memoir

The poet-author offers a vivid memoir about listening to the world around him, discussing key episodes in his life, from his youth to his global travels during which he encountered the art of sightseeing by ear.

Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening

David Weiss

Deborah Tall

Presents excerpts from the working notebooks of twenty-six American poets, including Marvin Bell, Donald Hall, Heather McHugh, and Charles Simic

Stephen Kuusisto

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