"Eavesdropping": Savoring the world by ear, from Manhattan to Grandma's attic

"Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening"
by Stephen Kuusisto
Norton, 186 pp., $23.95

Poet, professor and frequent National Public Radio commentator Stephen Kuusisto has been blind since birth. In the preface to his marvelous new book, he explains to those who haven't read his memoir, "Planet of the Blind," that children born prematurely can have damaged retinas. He sees the world in fragments, "like a myopic, darting minnow." Although he admits to "vision envy," he is no longer ashamed of being blind and has learned to "savor the world by ear."

Kuusisto takes us on explorations of many fascinating "soundscapes." For example, his parents lived in Helsinki, Finland, from 1958 to 1960. In "Harbor Songs," his chapter about their time there, gulls sound like mewing cats, ravens like rusty hinges and something about an old man's voice who sold potatoes from a harbor dory reminds Kuusisto of trolls.

Sounds frequently trigger his imagination. They function much like a writer's tool called "clustering," which is simply the jotting down of an idea or image, then adding to the page everything that springs to mind. For Kuusisto, walking in the woods, visiting Venice, hearing the Earth's underwater mumblings at hot springs in Iceland and finding music in the rush of sled runners over snow are all aural poetry. He shows sighted people, who overlook sound, the richness of our world.

Several times, he goes into forests or cities solo and gets lost. In "Birds," he wanders the New Hampshire woods of his childhood. A Sunday morning radio program taught him by age 7 to identify who's who in the treetops. Songs of purple finches resembled wind chimes, and he could happily listen for an hour. "I had a bed of moss where I'd lie for the concert," Kuusisto notes. "The moss smelled like bread."

He was lonely as a child. His parents fought. They also drank, he admits, and in the summer of 1962, they sent him to live with his grandmother. In the attic, Kuusisto discovers her ancient Victrola and a stack of Caruso records. He returns dozens of times. "The Victrola sang from its great, crackling heart," Kuusisto recalls. "And my own heart raced."

Music becomes a powerful companion, as does poetry. A substitute teacher introduced him to a recording of Milton's "Paradise Lost." The students were unimpressed; they preferred Kuusisto's own imitations of John Wayne, one of the few things that provided him any popularity.

In "Dog-Man: The Action Figure," Kuusisto gives a sense of how confidently he negotiates Manhattan as "a six-legged being" with his guide dog. Each street has such distinct music, he can tell where he is by sound. But "ear travel demands effort and optimism," he adds, mentioning a couple of occasions when careless drivers nearly killed him.

Other challenges include "spiritual infringements." Countless times, strangers ask how he went blind. People preach or offer to cure and pray for him. Or they think because he's blind, he's deaf. Like anyone else, Kuusisto dislikes the way that cellphone users' conversations invade others' peace and quiet. He also finds that loud, rude remarks about his dog or his disability are surprisingly common.

He relies on friends to round out his world. At baseball games, their detailed commentaries complement smells and sounds. Chicago may be "a great audio postcard," but "no listener could ever hear in the wind the exquisite formal arrangements of architecture." For such times, his wife, Connie, or friends step in. In Venice one morning, she describes a slapstick misadventure: A boat loaded with crates of oranges won't quite fit beneath a bridge. Amid bystanders' laughter and encouragement, five men clamber aboard to help lower the craft. "Heft and hilarity," Kuusisto sees, "were their only tools of navigation."