Stanley Kunitz Quotes

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.

Toward dawn we shared with youyour hour of desolation,the huge lingering passionof your unearthly out cry,as you swung your blind headtowards us and laboriously openeda bloodshot, glistening eye,in which we swam with terror and recognition.

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

End with an image and don't explain.

Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, IShall keep perpetual summer here; I shallRefuse to let one startled swallow die,Or, from the copper beeches, one leaf fall.

...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.

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

In my darkest night,when the moon was coveredand I roamed through wreckage,a nimbus-clouded voicedirected me:“Live in the layers,not on the litter.”Though I lack the artto decipher it,no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformationsis already written.I am not done with my changes.