Eye On Stanley Kunitz

One of the most vaulable books in my poetry collection is a first edition of Stanley Kunitz's Poems 1928-1978.

Opening it up today, on learning of his death at the totemic age of 100, I find one of his later poems (relatively speaking) as collected in that volume, "Trompe L'oeil", which features the lovely last three lines: "The fun was in the afterplay / when the true artisan / tells his white lies."

I do not know his poetry as well as I should. I shall return to it, with due attention. What I do know is that Mr. Kunitz (pictured above) was a gardener, a man haunted by the tensions between life and death, a knower of grief and eloquence, and a pacifist who campaigned against certain American wars and police actions; he was a great mentoring figure, to Slyvia Plath, and many others. America's poet laureate (in a sense twice) he won several of the major prizes along the way, as if incidentally. There was a graciousness to his life that leaves us the better for having had him among us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501665.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kunitz

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