Quote

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

Stanley Kunitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stanley Kunitz
Age: 100 †
Born: 1905
Born: July 29
Died: 2006
Died: May 14
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Worcester
Massachusetts
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
Write
Persons
Person
Firsts
Poems
First
Task
Writing
Tasks
Poet
Create

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

Image
In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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
Image
The supreme morality of art is to endure.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
End with an image and don't explain.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
My mother never forgave my father
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Forward my mail to Mars.
Stanley Kunitz