Quote

A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.

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
Poet
Secret
Nothing
Secrets
Poem

More quotes by 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
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
I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Forward my mail to Mars.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The supreme morality of art is to endure.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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
Image
Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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
Image
Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I like an ending that's both a door and a window.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz