In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

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 [...]

For me at least, Stanley Kunitz truly reaches his stride with the poems found in “from This Garland Danger.” I’ve loved “She Loved, She Railed” since I first read it in the 60’s, and poems such as “The Approach to Thebes,” “End of Summer,” and “Hermetic Poem” are equally compelling. Reading the poems this time around, [...]

“Robin Redbreast” isn’t my favorite poem in “from The Testing-Tree 1971,” nor the most important for understanding Kunitz, but it’s Veterans Day, and, as usual, I have little to say about that holiday nor about the war I fought in. Some memories are so vivid that I still can’t put them into words, [...]

Since I’ve already written about my favorite poem from the sections entitled “from The Layers” and “from Next to Last Things” in Kunitz’s Collected Poems, I chose to write about one of several poems that I also admire in this section, one that reminds why I continue to garden even though I’ve relocated to a [...]