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Title	:	The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz
Author	:	Stanley Kunitz
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 288 pages
Published	:	October 17th 2000 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 2000)
Categories	:	Poetry. Literature

The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz

Hardcover | Pages: 288 pages

Rating: 4.27 | 495 Users | 42 Reviews

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Stanley Kunitz's collected poems are an unassailable argument for age, experience, and impassioned observation. At 95, America's 10th poet laureate has many decades' worth of work under his belt, and his lyrics form a fine self-portrait even as they track his evolution toward the spare and simple. Kunitz's later poetry seems to effortlessly fuse feeling and form. With considerable wit, he sees into the life of things: a brook or a bird, a squirrel or a salmon is very much a part of nature, but it is also infinitely more, as anyone lucky enough to have read "King of the River," "The Snakes of September," and "The Wellfleet Whale" knows.

Kunitz's "Reflections," which preface his Collected Poems, offer several modest credos. In one, he writes, "I like to think that it is the poet's love of particulars, the things of this world, that leads him to universals." And his work is ample proof that what Kunitz likes to think is right! In "Robin Redbreast," for instance, the poet--living in an empty house that will soon be his no longer and facing nothing but blank pages--rescues a bird from some belligerent jays:

It was the dingiest bird
you ever saw, all the color
washed from him, as if
he had been standing in the rain,
friendless and stiff and cold,
since Eden went wrong.

Alas, a moment's complacency at his own good deed comes to a quick end. There is no need for the poet to drive home his point--he merely provides the tragic image of an old bullet hole in the robin's head, through which he catches a glimpse of "the cold flash of the blue / unappeasable sky." Yet Kunitz did not arrive at this level without effort, and much of the pleasure of this volume lies in witnessing the growth of the poet's mind. In his first collection, Intellectual Things (1930), the young artist seems to have spent a good deal of time luxuriating in the early Yeats, displaying a sweet tooth for allegory and archaic inversion. Perhaps thinking himself "a fierce young crier / Of poems," the youthful Kunitz pursued the sublime a little too relentlessly. His second book, Passport to the War (1944), is radically different, full of darkness and repudiation, its realities and anger very close to the surface. But it really isn't until The Testing-Tree, where family comes to the fore and influence is no longer cause for anxiety, that the poet finds his voice--one that has yet to desert him.

Several of Kunitz's finest, and most desolate, poems explore his father's suicide, which took place before he was born. Others, on Mark Rothko and Alexander Calder, celebrate creation in the face of immense difficulty. And there are poems, too, of resistance: this generous collection includes translations of Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Blok, as well as his own "Around Pastor Bonhoeffer," which commemorates the pacifist cleric who was part of the plot to kill Hitler. Throughout there are also love songs--to nature and women. "Route Six" makes one wonder why there isn't an official term for a poem celebrating an enduring marriage--an epithalamium with, as they say, legs. After a quarrel, Kunitz suggests to his wife that they head for the Cape, taking with them those passions "that flare past understanding":

we can stow them in the rear
along with ziggurats of luggage
and Celia, our transcendental cat,
past-mistress of all languages,
including Hottentot and silence.

In "The Layers," the poet asks point-blank: "How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses?" Reconciliation, Kunitz knows, isn't possible, but his work proves that the raptures of love and art are a strong consolation. --Kerry Fried

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Original Title:	The Collected Poems
ISBN:	0393050300 (ISBN13: 9780393050301)
Edition Language:	English

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Ratings: 4.27 From 495 Users | 42 Reviews

Assessment Epithetical Books The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz

He who is a fierce young crierOf poems will be tranquil as water.My dear GR friend (and fellow-dork) Patty recommended the poetry of Robert Hass to me. Stanley Kunitz wrote the introduction to Hass's Field Guide. Kunitz's effusive praise of Hass made me both want to read Field Guide and had me in search of Kunitz's own work. Kunitz's introduction alone revealed the heart of poet. How many introductions can do that?I looked forward to reading Field Guide and then moving on to Kunitz's Collected

Stunning, revelatory, full of pain and beauty; decade after decade of remarkable output. Amazing to read it all in one collection, although I want to go back, over and over to reread, digest, bathe in this incredible work.

Several years ago, I read Kunitz's magnificent King of the River. It is a heady poem, a song and a howl of the force of life propelling salmon through the drama of birth and death. Now this collection offers the full range of Kunitzs artistry spanning from 1930 to 1995.Through more than half a decade, Kunitzs poetry retains his clarity of images and ideas through a more traditional form. There is very little experiments in grammar, visual display, nor obscure words. On the readability level, he

All that holds me back from 5 stars are the early poems, which I just didn't dig--formal beyond structure into overly cerebral work that tries to be too high and mighty. Get into the 70's, and the magnificence of Kunitz really starts to show.

10th Poet Laureate of the US and distinguished writer of poetry well into his 90's, Stanley Kunitz's hallmark is saying only what needs to be said. He may not have been as prolific as some other poets because of this but the quality stands strong.



A cliché here and there (e.g., "dead of night") but overall an excellent collection.