Stanley Kunitz

1
Stanley Kunitz

• By Sean W.

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Stanleys Life

• Born Worcester, Massachusetts in 1905.
• Studied at Harvard, received a BA in 1925, and a
  MA in 1927.
• Graduated summa cum laude, and received the
  Garrison Medal for Poetry.
• He wrote his first book of poems before he was
  25, Intellectual Things.
• He then worked for a shorts time as a newspaper
  editor for the Wilson Library Bulletin before he
  served in the military in WW2.

3
The Quarrel

• The word I spoke in anger weighs less than a
  parsley seed, but a road runs through it that
  leads to my grave,that bought-and-paid-for lot
  on a salt-sprayed hill in Truro
• where the scrub pines overlook the bay.

• Half-way I'm dead enough,strayed from my own
  nature and my fierce hold on life.If I could
  cry, I'd cry, but I'm too old to be anybody's
  child.Liebchen,with whom should I quarrel
  except in the hiss of love, that harsh,
  irregular flame?

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Kunitz Teaching

• After the war Kunitz became a college professor.
• He taught at schools including
• Bennington College.
• Potsdam State Teachers' College
• Yale
• Princeton
• Rutgers
• the New School for Social Research
• Danforth as a visiting lecturer.

• He has also served as poet-in-residence at
  Colleges such as
• the University of Washington
• Queens College
• Brandeis University
• Princeton
• And he has taught for many years in the graduate
  writing program at Columbia University

5
Passing Through

• Sometimes, you say, I wearan abstracted look
  that drives youup the wall, as though it
  signifieddistress or disaffection.Don't take it
  so to heart.Maybe I enjoy not-being as muchas
  being who I am. Maybeit's time for me to
  practicegrowing old. The way I look at it, I'm
  passing through a phasegradually I'm changing
  to a word.Whatever you choose to claimof me is
  always yoursnothing is truly mineexcept my
  name. I onlyborrowed this dust.

• Nobody in the widow's householdever celebrated
  anniversaries.In the secrecy of my roomI would
  not admit I caredthat my friends were given
  parties.Before I left town for schoolmy
  birthday went up in smoke in a fire at City Hall
  that guttedthe Department of Vital
  Statistics.If it weren't for a census reportof
  a five-year-old White Malesharing my mother's
  addressat the Green Street tenement in
  WorcesterI'd have no documentary proofthat I
  exist. You are the first, my dear, to bully
  meinto these festive occasions.

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Stanley's Awards and Accomplishments

• the Bollingen Prize
• a Ford Foundation grant
• a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship
• Harvard's Centennial Medal
• the Levinson Prize
• 1958 Pulitzer prize winner
• the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award
• a senior fellowship from the National Endowment
  for the Arts
• the National Medal of the Arts
• the Shelley Memorial Award.

• He served for two years as Consultant in Poetry
  to the Library of Congress
• was designated State Poet of New York
• is a Chancellor Emeritus of The Academy of
  American Poets
• In 2000 he was named United States Poet Laureate.
  
• A founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in
  Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in
  New York City

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Hornworm

• Since that first morning when I crawledinto the
  world, a naked grubby thing,and found the world
  unkind,my dearest faith has been that thisis
  but a trial I shall be changed.In my imaginings
  I have already spentmy brooding winter
  underground,unfolded silky powdered wings, and
  climbedinto the air, free as a puff of cloudto
  sail over the steaming fields,alighting anywhere
  I pleased,thrusting into deep tubular
  flowers.It is not so there may be nectarin
  those cups, but not for me.All day, all night, I
  carry on my backembedded in my flesh, two
  rowsof little white cocoons,so neatly
  stackedthey look like eggs in a crate.And I am
  eaten half away.If I can gather strength enough

• It is not so there may be nectarin those cups,
  but not for me.All day, all night, I carry on my
  backembedded in my flesh, two rowsof little
  white cocoons,so neatly stackedthey look like
  eggs in a crate.And I am eaten half away.If I
  can gather strength enough
• I'll try to burrow under a stoneand spin myself
  a pursein which to sleep away the coldthough
  when the sun kisses the earthagain, I know I
  won't be there.Instead, out of my chrysaliswill
  break, like robbers from a tomb,a swarm of
  parasitic flies,leaving my wasted husk
  behind.Sir, you with the red snippersin your
  hand, hovering over me,casting your shadow, I
  greet you,whether you come as an angel of
  deathor of mercy. But tell me,before you choose
  to slice me in twoWho can understand the ways
  of the Great Worm in the Sky?

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Books

• Intellectual Things (1930)
• Passport to War (1944)
• Beginning With O (1977)
• Orchard Lamps (1978)
• Essential Blake (1987)
• Passing Through (1997)
• Next-to-Last Things

• Wellfleet Whale and Companion Poems
• Directory of American Poetry Books
• Field Guide
• Poems of Stanley Kunitz (1928-1978)
• The Terrible Threshold (1940-1970)
• From Feathers to Iron (1974-1976)

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Works Cited

• www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID2
• www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/kunitz/kunitz.
  htm
• www.albany.edu/writers-inst/kunitz.html
• bostonreview.mit.edu/BR25.6/burt.html
• www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kunitz.htm
• www.nortonpoets.com/kunitzs.htm
• www.nortonpoets.com/kunitzs.htm

• All Links were found by yahoo.com and google.com
  searches

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The End