Today we celebrate Stanley Kunitz, a poet of special significance to the NYS Writers Institute, born on this date in 1905.
Born July 29, 1905, in Worcester, Mass., Kunitz's first book of poems, Intellectual Things, was published in 1930. In the period before World War II he worked as a newspaperman, edited a magazine, and compiled several works of standard literary reference, of which the best known is Twentieth Century Authors.
Kunitz, the 2000 and 1974-76 Poet Laureate of the United States, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1959) for his Selected Poems: 1928-1958, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1987), the National Medal of Arts (1993), and the National Book Award (1995).
In 1987 at a ceremony in the Legislative Office Building in Albany, Stanley Kunitz was named the first New York State Poet at a ceremony hosted by Gov. Mario Cuomo.
NYS Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl was a reporter at the Albany Times Union in 1987 and covered the event. In his story he wrote:
"Stanley Kunitz became the official New York State Poet Wednesday with a handshake from Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a glass sculpture and a check for $10,000 that accompanies the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poets...
After learning of his award last month, Kunitz expressed surprise and thanks but suggested it would not much change his thinking and the state and establishments.
'I've tried to tell the truth about how it feels to be alive in this moment of time and in this place. I've tried to be an honest witness and a responsible adversary of the power structure.'"
Attendees at the event included novelist E. L. Doctorow, Writers Institute Founder William Kennedy, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Carolyn Kizer and Mary Oliver, among others.
Gov. Cuomo's official citation praised Kunitz as a "poet of humane power and subtle growth... For over half this century, his poems have been illuminations of our daily lives, singing of the pain and gain of the search for what it it that we have lost -- be it a father or a memory."
(Photo caption: Stanley Kunitz, Grace Paley, and NY Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.)
At the same ceremony, novelist and short story writer Grace Paley was honored as the first New York State Author.
In a New York Times interview, Kunitz remarked: "I run into Grace now and then at the Jefferson Market. Not bad for Greenwich Village, having the official Author and Poet. There's still some life in the old Village."
At the age of 97, Kunitz returned to Albany in 2002 for an event with poet Marie Howe for two events at the University at Albany. He was still writing poetry when he died at the age of 100 in his Greenwich Village apartment in on May 14, 2006.
The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
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 litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Source: The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2002)
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