Poetry Quotes by Stanley Kunitz

“Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, I Shall keep perpetual summer here; I shall Refuse to let one startled swallow die, Or,…

— Stanley Kunitz

One critic wrote . . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don't know…

— Stanley Kunitz

Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.

— Stanley Kunitz

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

— Stanley Kunitz

“Transformations All night he ran, his body air, But that was in another year. Lately the answered shape of his laughter, The…

— Stanley Kunitz

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

— Stanley Kunitz

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

— Stanley Kunitz

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest…

— Stanley Kunitz

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

— Stanley Kunitz

The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.

— Stanley Kunitz

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him.

— Stanley Kunitz

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

— Stanley Kunitz

The ear writes my poems, not the mind.

— Stanley Kunitz

The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.

— Stanley Kunitz

The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.

— Stanley Kunitz

Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.

— Stanley Kunitz

Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.

— Stanley Kunitz

Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you…

— Stanley Kunitz

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never…

— Stanley Kunitz

“ The Layers I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though…

— Stanley Kunitz

I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look…

— Stanley Kunitz

A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of.

— Stanley Kunitz

I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a…

— Stanley Kunitz