70 Quotes by Stanley Kunitz

Live in the layers, not on the litter.

What makes the engine go? 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 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

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 be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.

I refuse to turn to theology to justify the life or redeem it. There is a question always of the connection to the eternal. I say to myself above all, keep alive your conviction that there are sacred elements in the life in the practice of the life that must be respected. But the conviction in the existence of the sacred does not necessarily imply that you need to believe in a creator, because we are the ones that made the sacred.

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 the world.

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 geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.

In every house of marriage there's room for an interpreter.

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