Quote

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.

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
Lives
Many
Abides
Stray
Walked
Principle
Principles
Struggle
Though

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

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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.
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Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
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The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
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An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.
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Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
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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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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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How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?
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In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
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I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
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The ear writes my poems, not the mind.
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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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Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
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...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.
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My mother never forgave my father
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Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.
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Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
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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 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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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.
Stanley Kunitz