Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)Father and Son
Now in the suburbs and the falling light I followed him, and now down sandy road Whiter than bone-dust, through the sweet Curdle of fields, where the plums Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one. Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet, After the secret master of my blood, Him, steeped in the odor of ponds, whose indomitable love Kept me in chains. Strode years; stretched into bird; Raced through the sleeping country where I was young, The silence unrolling before me as I came, The night nailed like an orange to my brow. How should I tell him my fable and the fears, How bridge the chasm in a casual tone, Saying, "The house, the stucco one you built, We lost. Sister married and went from home, And nothing comes back, it's strange, from where she goes. I lived on a hill that had too many rooms: Light we could make, but not enough of warmth, And when the light failed, I climbed under the hill. The papers are delivered every day; I am alone and never shed a tear." At the water's edge, where the smothering ferns lifted Their arms, "Father!" I cried, "Return! You know The way. I'll wipe the mudstains from your clothes; No trace, I promise, will remain. Instruct Your son, whirling between two wars, In the Gemara of your gentleness, For I would be a child to those who mourn And brother to the foundlings of the field And friend of innocence and all bright eyes. O teach me how to work and keep me kind." Among the turtles and the lilies he turned to me The white ignorant hollow of his face. (1944)Reprinted from The Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz © 2000. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
"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 have to think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself. And I think the world tends to forget that this is the ultimate significance of the body of work each artist produces. It is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life."
Stanley Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905. His many books of poetry include The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton, 2000); Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (1995), which won the National Book Award; Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays (1985); The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Passport to the War (1940); Selected Poems, 1928-1958, which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Testing-Tree (1971); and Intellectual Things (1930). In 2000 he was named United States Poet Laureate. A founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in New York City, he taught for many years in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. He died on May 14, 2006.
You can read excerpts from "A Curious Gladness: A Garden Conversation with Stanley Kunitz and Genine Lentine," which appeared in our May/June 2006 issue. A limited edition Robert Motherwell lithograph of Kunitz's poem "The Quarrel" is also available.
