Quote

Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.

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
Surprised
Changing
Meaning
Poetry
Language

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

Image
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.
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
A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits they do not come to coo.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I like an ending that's both a door and a window.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
The supreme morality of art is to endure.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
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.
Stanley Kunitz
Image
...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.
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