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
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.
talking perfection vision
Not that you need to be a saint to have visions worth talking about. The most effective prescription, I suspect, is to be a disciplined sinner. Perfection, as Valery noted, is work.
people frailty knows
We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.
dream children flying
Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
be-careful careful
You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.
giving style dare
Be what you are. Give What is yours to give. Have Style. Dare.
blessing mind form
The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
art thinking expression
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life.
mean waiting new-life
I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
quiver whole universe
The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.