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STANLEY KUNITZ
"The remarkable thing that I feel is that despite the aging of the body -- despite those aches and pains and all the rest of what happens to one at this stage of a life -- the spirit remains young. It's the same spirit I remember living with during my childhood."
Stanley Kunitz welcomed his ninetieth year in 1995 with a new collection of luminous, life-affirming poems titled Passing Through. Exceptionally generous and encouraging to younger artists, Stanley Kunitz has received nearly every honor our culture can bestow upon a poet. He and his wife summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and winter in New York City.
"The Portrait"
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
"The Round"
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed . . ."
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
"Halley's Comet"
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
When did you last notice that
"Light splashed this morning"?
Questions
1. Why does the poet in "The Round" refer to his room as a "cell"? Why do you think he arranged his room downstairs, with his desk offering nothing for a view except "a bloated compost heap"?
2. Why doesn't "The Round" start in the poet's "cell"?
3. How does the poet of "The Round" help a new life to begin for himself each day?
4. Both "Halley's Comet" and "The Portrait" recall childhood memories. Which do you think is the earlier memory? Which the more private memory? Which the more disturbing memory?
Activities
1. Stanley Kunitz wrote "Halley's Comet" on the occasion of the comet's second pass by our planet during his lifetime. Find out what you can about Halley's Comet, especially the popular response to those appearances. Write ten lines that connect a major natural event that you have experienced or know about with something in your life.
2. Arrange a choral reading of "The Round" as a musical "round." Assign each of its three stanzas to a different group of readers. Let each group practice separately, repeating the stanza assigned. Then combine the groups by experimenting with ways of layering the stanzas, while keeping them all going at once.
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