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A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.

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
Secrets
Poem
Poet
Secret
Nothing

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

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An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.
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The ear writes my poems, not the mind.
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I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
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In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
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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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Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.
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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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A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.
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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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Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
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We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.
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Live in the layers, not on the litter.
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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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I like an ending that's both a door and a window.
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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 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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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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The supreme morality of art is to endure.
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Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
Stanley Kunitz
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My mother never forgave my father
Stanley Kunitz