Eavesdropping: A Life by Ear

By: Stephen Kuusisto

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Synopsis: Blind people are not casual listeners. From his early childhood on, Stephen Kuusisto recounts with a poet's sense of detail the surprise that comes when we are actively listening to our surroundings. There is an art to eavesdropping. Kuusisto highlights the periods of childhood when a writer first becomes aware of his curiosity and imagination: as a boy he listened to Caruso records in his grandmother's attic and spent hours in the New Hampshire woods learning the calls of birds. And as a grown man he visits cities around the world in order to discover the art of sightseeing by ear. Kuusisto writes, "In reality I cannot see the world by ear, I can only reinvent it for my own purposes." And this is his remarkable tactic for both amusement and survival, allowing him to imagine, for example, the streets of New York "crowded with Russian ghosts and wheels that have broken loose from their carriages." In Eavesdropping the reader is invited into Kuusisto's world-American poetry, music, travel, and the art of eavesdropping-to share with him all there is to hear and even "see" in his unique celebration of a hearing life.