Stanley Kunitz Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The unconscious creates, the ego edits.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Ego, Consciousness, Unconscious

  11 Copy quote

• I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Joy, Survival, Surviving

  Stanley Kunitz (1986). “A Celebration for Stanley Kunitz: on his eightieth birthday”, Sheep Meadow Pr

  13 Copy quote

• Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Dream, Children, Flying

  Stanley Kunitz (1944). “Passport to the war: a selection of poems”

  17 Copy quote

• Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Enemy, Poetry Is

  Stanley Kunitz, Kent P. Ljungquist (2013). “Conversations with Stanley Kunitz”, p.11, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

• The supreme morality of art is to endure.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Art, Morality, Endure

  9 Copy quote

• ...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Writing, Bed, Ears

  6 Copy quote

• Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Suicide, Sweet, Art

  4 Copy quote

• Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Spirit, Cherish, Poet

  7 Copy quote

• The ear writes my poems, not the mind.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Writing, Mind, Ears

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Practice, Elements

  5 Copy quote

• Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Dog, Needs, Half

  7 Copy quote

• In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Marriage, House, Rooms

  Stanley Kunitz (1983). “The Wellfleet Whale and Companion Poems”

  12 Copy quote

• Live in the layers,
  not on the litter.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Layers, Next Chapter

  Stanley Kunitz, “The Layers”

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Stanley Kunitz (1974). “The terrible threshold: selected poems, 1940-1970”, Harvill Secker

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Made, Critics, Feels

  8 Copy quote

• Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Men, Who I Am, Married

  "The Gardener" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. September 1, 2003.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Talking, Perfection, Vision

  7 Copy quote

• A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Needs, Alive, Wilderness

  4 Copy quote

• What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Football, Passion, Desire

  "The Gardener" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. September 1, 2003.

  18 Copy quote

• Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Self, Taste, Rhythm

  16 Copy quote

• Forward my mail to Mars.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Mars, Mail

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Dream, Art

  7 Copy quote

• A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Longing, Buried

  "The Gardener" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. September 1, 2003.

  7 Copy quote

• It is my heart that's late,
  it is my song that's flown.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Song, Heart, My Heart

  "The Gardener" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. September 1, 2003.

  5 Copy quote

• An old poet ought never to be caught with his technique showing.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Technique, Poet, Caught

  Stanley Kunitz, Kent P. Ljungquist (2013). “Conversations with Stanley Kunitz”, p.40, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin