Stephen Dunn did not jump for joy when the news arrived in April that his book “Different Hours” had won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He was happy, all right. But he did not faint. He did not scream. Here’s why.

“It was actually very complicated,” the poet explained, speaking recently from his home in southern New Jersey. “It had been leaked to me a month or so in advance that I was on the short list. I wish it hadn’t been leaked because I didn’t sleep well after that. I did, however, entertain the possibility of winning before it happened. Then, the weekend before the announcement was made, it was leaked to me that I had won. So, no, I didn’t have this sudden phone call and jumping up and down.”

The odd surprise, said Dunn, who will read from his poetry this afternoon in Castine and July 19 in Stonington, was that his poetry was chosen to contend for the prize in the first place. It’s not that he’s a stranger to recognition. Dunn has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books of poetry and prose. Among his professional accolades are: an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Levinson Award from Poetry magazine, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at Princeton, Syracuse and Columbia universities.

Still Dunn felt it was somewhat unlikely that his poetry about ordinary life and everyday people would make its way into the hands of the Pulitzer committee.

“There are some people who win – like Charlie Williams last year – who I think people expect to get it,” said Dunn. “I’m not sure that was the case with me. I don’t think I had been talked about in that way. When Louise Gluck got it, when Charlie got it, you say, ‘Uh-huh, that’s right.’ But in general, I think it was much more of a surprise in the poetry world when I got it.”

Dunn, who is 61 and teaches creative writing at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, did not follow a straight line to becoming a poet. He was a star player with his high school basketball team in Queens, and then again at Hofstra University, where he majored in history.

So when Dunn laments that poetry is not a part of daily life in America, he is, in part, reflecting on his own past.

“The general populace grows up believing poetry does not have anything to do with our lives,” said Dunn, whose manner, like his poetry, is friendly and pensive. “I never thought it had anything to do with my life until I was out of college. It was just something written in code and the teacher knew the code and you didn’t and you had to break the code.”

Philip Booth, the eminent poet and a resident of Castine, was one of the teachers who helped Dunn “break the code.” The writers met in 1969, when Dunn, who was about to turn 30, returned to school, this time to study creative writing at Syracuse University. Booth was a professor in the English department there.

Booth noticed Dunn immediately not only because his background as an athlete was unconventional for a writing student but also because he had a serious and considered approach to analyzing and constructing poetry. Booth was also drawn to Dunn’s work ethic, which, said Booth, undoubtedly originated in a family life that valued and participated in hard work.

“It seemed to me that he was so solid in what he knew and how much he could work on his own,” said Booth, who with his wife, Margaret, will be Dunn’s hosts for the Castine event. “I could tell even then that he would be someone who would keep going.”

For Dunn, the encounter with the elder poet helped set a career in motion and developed a true sense of a poet’s calling and enterprise. In the 30 years since their original teacher-student relationship formally ended, they have spoken on the phone as friends and mutual mentors nearly every month. They read each other’s work and, as Booth poetically put it, talk about “who’s who and why’s why and mostly about poetry.”

While the two poets connect often and deeply on the topic of poetry, the actual job of teaching creative writing to young people is more complicated. Young poets, said Dunn, do not readily understand that practice and dedication are just as important to a poet as rehearsals to dancers and practicing scales to musicians. The other artists “know you have to give yourself over to your art wholly. Poets don’t quite know that,” said Dunn.

In his own teaching, Dunn hopes simply to “hasten the progress” of a writer.

“Perhaps everyone can write a poem, but not everyone can be a poet,” said Dunn. “We write our poems with our second selves. They’re superior to who we are. That’s what I long to be in the act of writing and what I do is trick myself into that second self. It’s the possibility of being perfect in art, or near perfect. You have a chance to be even more moral than you would be in real life.”

The readings do not mark Dunn’s first visit to Maine. Last year, he was writer-in-residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, and has made many visits to Castine to see the Booths.

“Maine is gorgeous and has more artists per capita than any place I’ve seen in a long time,” he said.

Dunn’s observation is significant because of the elusive appreciation for poetry in America. “I don’t think the poet is sacred in the United States,” said Dunn. “Certainly, the poet is largely dismissed. Yet there are those intense pockets of interest throughout the country that I encounter when I do readings. There are people out there to whom poetry matters a great deal.”

Such as Mainers?

Possibly – especially if you consider Dunn’s final description of the state as “a kindred place.”

Stephen Dunn will read from his poetry at 4 p.m. today at the Castine Unitarian Church on Court Street on the town common in Castine. A book signing will be held after the reading. Admission for the benefit event is $10. Dunn will also read at 7 p.m. July 19 at the Opera House in Stonington. Admission is by donation only.