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Stanley Kunitz Biography

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (/ˈkjuːnɪts/; July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) was 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.

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Stanley Kunitz Quotes

A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.

Knows, Nothing, Poem, Poet, Secret, Secrets

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

Alive, Needs, Poet, Requires, Wilderness

Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.

Hopkins, Rhythm, Self, Taste

Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.

Brain, Children, Dream, Dreams, Flying, Full

Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.

Art, Life, Monotonous, Suicide, Sweet, Think

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

Be Careful, Careful, Origin, Poem, Wild

I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer. ’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.

Dropped, Eventually, Hoe, Summer, Thinking, Writing

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.

Art, Expression, Inevitably, Prizes, Thinking

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.

Lives, My Own, Principles, Stray, Struggle, Though

It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown.

Flown, Heart, My Heart, Song

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

Enemy, Poem, Poetry, Poetry Is

The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.

Firsts, Person, Task, Tasks, Write, Writing

End with an image and don't explain.

Ends, Explain, Image, Writing

I dance
for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.

Joy, Road, Survival, Surviving

The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.

Blessing, Breaking, Form, Mind

One critic wrote. . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don't know why, but somehow that made me feel quite lighthearted.

Critics, Feels, Made, Poems, Sounded, Wrote

I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.

Art, Deep, Dream, Natural, Transparent, Writing

The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.

Continuous, Quiver, Universe, Whole

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.

Day, Mean, New Life, Tomorrow, Wait, Waiting

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.

Perfection, Prescription, Talking, Vision, Work

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Stanley Kunitz Biography

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