“The poem comes in the form of a blessing—‘like rapture breaking on the mind,’ as I tried to phrase it in my youth. Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life sustaining, life enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.” —Stanley Kunitz
http://www.nortonpoets.com/kunitzs.htm
In his book Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, Stanley procures the wisdom gained through his experiences with a vibrant spirit of discovery anew. His poems exemplify the vitality of life. The ideas of the poetry proclaim the wisdom while the structure and syntax of the poems exemplify unbridled expression.
For example, the following are the closing lines of the book’s title poem, which he wrote at age 79:
The way I look
at it, I'm passing through a phase:
gradually I'm changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.
(Barber). http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96jun/...
Stanley Kunitz was the tenth Poet Laureate for the United States of America, serving from 2000 – 2001. Although he is an aged master poet, his words reign in wisdom and in rebellious spirit of youthful discovery.
Born in 1905, in Worcester, Massachusetts, Stanley Kunitz enjoyed his boyhood under the care of his mother, for his father deserted mother and son weeks before he was born. Kunitz captures of the spirit of his mother as she remained as mother in the following poem entitled “The Portrait.”
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prm...
The reader can even hear the slap across the boy’s face. Additionally, the reader feels the utter sense of surprise, confusion, and dismay the boy must have felt as he realizes that to his mother and to him, his father shredded away like the torn pieces of the photograph.
The poet takes pains to “unpack his syntax, to hone a compact two- or three-beat line, to shape his poems with idiomatic economy and modesty” (Barber).
http://www.nortonpoets.com/kunitzs.htm
In his book Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, Stanley procures the wisdom gained through his experiences with a vibrant spirit of discovery anew. His poems exemplify the vitality of life. The ideas of the poetry proclaim the wisdom while the structure and syntax of the poems exemplify unbridled expression.
For example, the following are the closing lines of the book’s title poem, which he wrote at age 79:
The way I look
at it, I'm passing through a phase:
gradually I'm changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.
(Barber). http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96jun/...
Stanley Kunitz was the tenth Poet Laureate for the United States of America, serving from 2000 – 2001. Although he is an aged master poet, his words reign in wisdom and in rebellious spirit of youthful discovery.
Born in 1905, in Worcester, Massachusetts, Stanley Kunitz enjoyed his boyhood under the care of his mother, for his father deserted mother and son weeks before he was born. Kunitz captures of the spirit of his mother as she remained as mother in the following poem entitled “The Portrait.”
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prm...
The reader can even hear the slap across the boy’s face. Additionally, the reader feels the utter sense of surprise, confusion, and dismay the boy must have felt as he realizes that to his mother and to him, his father shredded away like the torn pieces of the photograph.
The poet takes pains to “unpack his syntax, to hone a compact two- or three-beat line, to shape his poems with idiomatic economy and modesty” (Barber).
The copyright of the article Stanley Kunitz: The Spirit of Life In This Visionary's Poetry in American Poetry Review is owned by . Permission to republish Stanley Kunitz: The Spirit of Life In This Visionary's Poetry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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