The collected poems / Stanley Kunitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kunitz, Stanley, 1905-2006.

Standardized Title:

Poems

Language:

English

Physical Description:

285 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Norton, [2000]

Summary:

In 1995, Stanley Kunitz received the National Book Award in Poetry. the award reads in part: "In his genius, great clarity is joined to great generosity. His work shines with humanity, humor, precision, and passion." Now, in the year of his ninety-fifth birthday, Kunitz combines both early and later poems, including his 1958 Selected Poems (which won the Pulitzer Prize), and presents us with the gift of his life's work to date in poetry.

The early poems, long unavailable in any edition, sound themes that have always engaged Kunitz: life's meaning, the relation of time to eternity, kinship with nature, love and loss, most poignantly the prenatal loss of his father. Despite his deep recognition of the tragic element, Kunitz ardently celebrates life, as in the lines from "The Long Boat" that read like an epitaph: "He loved the earth so much / he wanted to stay forever." Perpetually curious, eager for fresh revelations, Kunitz fully embodies his own advice to younger poets "to persevere, then explore. Be explorers all your life."

Contents:

Reflections 13

from Intellectual Things (1930)

Change 17

Single Vision 18

Particular Lullaby 20

Promise Me 21

Strange Calendar 22

Poem 23

Deciduous Branch 25

The Words of the Preacher 26

Ambergris 27

Approach of Autumn 28

The Pivot 29

He 30

Very Tree 31

Prophecy on Lethe 33

Lovers Relentlessly 34

Nocturne 35

For Proserpine 36

Parting 37

I Dreamed That I Was Old 38

Night-Piece 39

Between Me and the Rock 40

Transformations 41

First Love 42

Last Words 43

Eagle 44

So Intricately Is This World Resolved 45

Benediction 46

In a Strange House 48

Master and Mistress 49

Organic Bloom 50

Beyond Reason 51

The Lesson 52

Vita Nuova 53

from Passport to the War (1944)

Reflection by a Mailbox 57

The Last Picnic 58

Welcome the Wrath 59

Night Letter 60

Father and Son 62

The Hemorrhage 64

The Harsh Judgment 66

Confidential Instructions 67

The Signal from the House 68

The Tutored Child 69

The Economist's Song 70

The Old Clothes Man 71

The Fitting of the Mask 73

The Supper Before Last 75

The Daughters of the Horseleech 76

Careless Love 77

The Guilty Man 78

Between the Acts 79

This Day This World 80

The Last Question 81

How Long Is the Night? 82

The Reckoning 83

Open the Gates 84

from This Garland, Danger, in Selected Poems: 1928-1958

The Science of the Night 87

Green Ways 89

When the Light Falls 90

Among the Gods 91

As Flowers Are 92

The Waltzer in the House 93

Sotto Voce 94

Grammar Lesson 95

She Wept, She Railed 96

Foreign Affairs 97

The Unwithered Garland 99

The Man Upstairs 100

The Approach to Thebes 101

The Dark and the Fair 103

The Thief 105

End of Summer 108

Goose Pond 109

The Dragonfly 110

The War Against the Trees 113

The Thing That Eats the Heart 115

By Lamplight 116

The Scourge 117

Hermetic Poem 118

To the Reader (Baudelaire) 119

The Way Down 121

The Class Will Come to Order 124

The Summing-Up 126

Revolving Meditation 127

A Spark of Laurel 130

from the Testing-Tree (1971)

Journal for My Daughter 135

An Old Cracked Tune 141

The Portrait 142

The Magic Curtain 143

After the Last Dynasty 146

The Illumination 148

Robin Redbreast 149

River Road 151

Summer Solstice (Mandelstam) 153

Tristia (Mandelstam) 154

The Mound Builders 156

The Customs Collector's Report 159

The Gladiators 161

The System 163

Around Pastor Bonhoeffer 164

Bolsheviks (Stolzenberg) 167

Three Floors 168

The Flight of Apollo 169

King of the River 170

The Mulch 173

Indian Summer at Land's End 174

Cleopatra (Akhmatova) 175

Dante (Akhmatova) 176

Boris Pasternak (Akhmatova) 177

The Artist 179

The Testing-Tree 180

The Game 184

from the Layers, in the Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1978

The Knot 187

What of the Night? 188

Quinnapoxet 190

Words for the Unknown Makers 192

To a Slave Named Job 192

Sacred to the Memory 192

Girl with Sampler 193

Trompe l'Oeil 194

A Blessing of Women 194

The Catch 197

The Crystal Cage 198

Signs and Portents 200

Firesticks 203

The Lincoln Relics 204

Meditations on Death (Ungaretti) 208

The Quarrel 212

The Unquiet Ones 213

My Sisters 214

Route Six 215

The Layers 217

from Next-to-Last Things (1985)

The Snakes of September 221

The Abduction 222

Raccoon Journal 224

The Old Darned Man 227

The Scene (Blok) 229

The Image-Maker 230

Lamplighter: 1914 231

Day of Foreboding 233

Three Small Parables for My Poet Friends 234

The Round 236

Passing Through 238

The Long Boat 240

The Wellfleet Whale 241

from Passing Through: the Later Poems (1995)

My Mother's Pears 249

Chariot 251

In the Dark House 253

Halley's Comet 256

Hornworm: Summer Reverie 258

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation 259

The Sea, That Has No Ending... 261

Proteus 264

Touch Me 266.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

0393050300

OCLC:

44270445