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The ear writes my poems, not the mind.

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
Writes
Poems
Ears
Writing
Mind

More quotes by 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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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
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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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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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Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.
Stanley Kunitz
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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
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I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.
Stanley Kunitz
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Live in the layers, not on the litter.
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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Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
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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A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.
Stanley Kunitz
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Forward my mail to Mars.
Stanley Kunitz
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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
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The supreme morality of art is to endure.
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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The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.
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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Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Stanley Kunitz