Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning. Stanley Kunitz More Quotes by Stanley Kunitz More Quotes From Stanley Kunitz Memory is each man's poet-in-residence. Stanley Kunitz poet men memories Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am. Stanley Kunitz married who-i-am men 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 summer writing thinking When they shall paint our sockets gray And light us like a stinking fuse, Remember that we once could say, Yesterday we had a world to lose. Stanley Kunitz light yesterday world A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. Stanley Kunitz buried longing The unconscious creates, the ego edits. Stanley Kunitz unconscious ego consciousness Forward my mail to Mars. Stanley Kunitz mars mail I like an ending that's both a door and a window. Stanley Kunitz doors window How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses? Stanley Kunitz loss heart Poetry is the enemy of the poem. Stanley Kunitz poetry-is enemy One critic wrote . . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don't know why, but somehow that made me feel quite lighthearted. Stanley Kunitz critics made feels 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 dream beautiful art Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo. Stanley Kunitz cherish poet spirit I associate the garden with the whole experience of being alive, and so, there is nothing in the range of human experience that is separate from what the garden can signify in its eagerness and its insistence, and in its driving energy to live -- to grow, to bear fruit. Stanley Kunitz alive garden energy 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 vision perfection talking Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember. Stanley Kunitz poetry writing today 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 moon book art The supreme morality of art is to endure. Stanley Kunitz endure morality art I refuse to turn to theology to justify the life or redeem it. There is a question always of the connection to the eternal. I say to myself above all, keep alive your conviction that there are sacred elements in the life in the practice of the life that must be respected. But the conviction in the existence of the sacred does not necessarily imply that you need to believe in a creator, because we are the ones that made the sacred. Stanley Kunitz elements practice believe It is my heart that's late, Stanley Kunitz my-heart heart song
