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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
Though
Lives
Many
Abides
Stray
Walked
Principle
Principles
Struggle

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

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My mother never forgave my father
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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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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 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.
Stanley Kunitz
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In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
Stanley Kunitz
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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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The supreme morality of art is to endure.
Stanley Kunitz
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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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The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
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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...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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The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
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Forward my mail to Mars.
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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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How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?
Stanley Kunitz
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It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown.
Stanley Kunitz
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Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
Stanley Kunitz
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Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
Stanley Kunitz
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The ear writes my poems, not the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
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Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
Stanley Kunitz