All Stanley Kunitz Quotes
- 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… Affliction
- Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams. Aviation
- In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter. Every House
- 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… Art
- I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild… Beating
- 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… Disciplined
- I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see… Art
- 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… Approach
- The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems. Create
- Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are… Bottom
- We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed. Best
- A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of. Inspirational
- The unconscious creates, the ego edits. Creates
- My mother never forgave my father Father
- Rhythm to me is essentially what Hopkins called the taste of self. I taste myself as rhythm. Called
- I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road. Dance
- I like an ending that's both a door and a window. Both
- The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language. Always Perfect
- The supreme morality of art is to endure. Art
- Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning. Act
- Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember. Easier
- The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn Break
- When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you… Acknowledgment
- What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. Desire
- In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: "Live in the layers,not on the… Already Written