Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitzwas an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth29 July 1905
CityWorcester, MA
doors window
I like an ending that's both a door and a window.
song heart my-heart
It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown.
dream garden perfection
We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.
secret poet knows
A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.
heart dark break
The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn
heart loss
How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?
yesterday light world
When they shall paint our sockets gray And light us like a stinking fuse, Remember that we once could say, Yesterday we had a world to lose.
poetry language poetry-is
Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
struggle principles my-own
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
writing ends
End with an image and don't explain.
ego unconscious edits
The unconscious creates, the ego edits.
self taste rhythm
Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
perfect trying resistance
The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.
hero sleep race
Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race.