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An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.

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
Caught
Poet
Ought
Never
Showing
Technique

More quotes by Stanley Kunitz

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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.
Stanley Kunitz
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Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Stanley Kunitz
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End with an image and don't explain.
Stanley Kunitz
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Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
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Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
Stanley Kunitz
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We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.
Stanley Kunitz
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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.
Stanley Kunitz
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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.
Stanley Kunitz
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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.
Stanley Kunitz
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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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I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
Stanley Kunitz
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Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Stanley Kunitz
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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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The ear writes my poems, not the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
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A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.
Stanley Kunitz
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A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.
Stanley Kunitz
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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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Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.
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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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