In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

Stanley Kunitz, an American poet, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, named Poet Laureate in 2000, speaks of age, observant of its changes. His poem, “The Layers” offers his observations of the steps and turns in a life lived thoughtfully, engaging in its twists, a life not left willingly at any age. “The Layers” speaks to [...]

Although I’ve been reading Stanley Kunitz’s poetry since I first heard him read his poetry at the University of Washington in the early 1960’s, I’d never read any of the poems in the section entitled “from Intellectual Things (1930)” in The Collected Poems. I was struck by how much these early poems reminded me of the [...]

Although originally drawn more to the dramatic poems like “Open the Gates” in Kunitz’s “from Passport to the War (1944), in the end I decided that my favorite poem, though perhaps less typical of poems in this section, was: CARELESS LOVE Who have been lonely once Are comforted by their guns. Affectionately they speak To the dark beauty, whose cheek Beside [...]