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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.

Stanley Kunitz

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Stanley Kunitz
Age: 100 †
Born: 1905
Born: July 29
Died: 2006
Died: May 14
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Worcester
Massachusetts
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
Ones
Suffering
Dream
Expelled
Stills
Permitted
Still
Exile
Suffer
Perfection
Garden

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The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
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The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn
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Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.
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In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: Live in the layers, not on the litter. Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.
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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.
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A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.
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It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown.
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In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
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Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
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Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
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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.
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Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
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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.
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My mother never forgave my father
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To conquer a piece of earth and make it as beautiful as one can dream of it being: That is art, too. A man cannot be separated from the earth. I come out of the garden every day feeling, oh, inspired in a way that one needs in order to convert the daily-ness of the life into something greater than that little life itself.
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I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
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I like an ending that's both a door and a window.
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I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
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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.
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Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
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