"The Reverse Side" was written in the mid-1990s and published in 2000. In the poem the speaker's attitude toward "the terrified and the simple" who "latch onto one story, / just one version of the great mystery" is a mixture of sympathy and criticism. But in his essay "The Hand Reaching into the Crowd" from his prose collection Walking Light, Dunn (speaking on his own behalf) expresses an opinion that is more openly critical of those he regards as closed-minded. Echoing "The Reverse Side" almost exactly, he writes "We are our stories, which is why it is useful to know many. The scariest people I know are the ones who avidly subscribe to one story, one version of the world." In the essay he does not say explicitly what reason he has to fear such people. But one may suppose that what frightens Dunn is the kind...