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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
Showing
Technique
Caught
Poet
Ought
Never
More quotes by Stanley Kunitz
...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
Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.
Stanley Kunitz
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.
Stanley Kunitz
The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
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
Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.
Stanley Kunitz
It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown.
Stanley Kunitz
Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Stanley Kunitz
Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
Stanley Kunitz
I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
Stanley Kunitz
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
The ear writes my poems, not the mind.
Stanley Kunitz
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
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
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
End with an image and don't explain.
Stanley Kunitz
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
How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?
Stanley Kunitz
Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Stanley Kunitz
