Life & Wisdom Quote by Douglas Dunn

Affection that can’t quite justify itself is one of poetry’s most honest poses, and Douglas Dunn leans into it with a casual shrug that’s doing real work. “I’ve always liked Muir without knowing quite why” reads like a throwaway line, but it’s a small manifesto against the compulsion to rationalize taste. In a cultural climate that loves receipts - citations, influences, “the canon” as a spreadsheet - Dunn stakes out a stubbornly human claim: some attachments arrive before arguments.

The name “Muir” almost certainly gestures toward Edwin Muir, the Orkney-born poet and translator whose work often carries a lucid, haunted plainness. Dunn’s phrasing suggests a readerly relationship formed early, prior to critical equipment, when poems hit the nervous system more than the intellect. That “always” implies longevity; the lack of “why” implies that the bond has survived multiple chances to be dismantled by theory, fashion, or biography. Dunn isn’t bragging about innocence, either. The sentence is seasoned: it’s the voice of someone aware of how suspect unexamined preferences can seem, yet unwilling to fake a post-hoc rationale.

Subtext: influence can be subterranean. Poets absorb tones, moral weather, and rhythms that don’t announce themselves as lessons. Dunn’s admiration may be for Muir’s steadiness, his spiritual unease, his unforced clarity - qualities that readers feel as trust before they can name craft. The line honors that pre-critical spark, and quietly resists the idea that liking must be defensible to be legitimate.