List of Stanley Kunitz Quotes

My Mother Never Forgave My Father

An Old Poet Ought Never To Be Caught With His Technique Showing.

It Is My Heart That's Late, It Is My Song That's Flown.

Poetry Today Is Easier To Write But Harder To Remember.

Certainly The Modern Poets I Cherish Most Are Disturbing Spirits; They Do Not Come To Coo.

One Critic Wrote . . . That My Poems Sounded As Though They Had Been Translated From The Hungarian. I Don't Know Why, But Somehow That Made Me Feel Quite Lighthearted.

A Poet Needs To Keep His Wilderness Alive Inside Him. To Remain A Poet After Forty Requires An Awareness Of Your Darkest Africa, That Part Of Yourself That Will Never Be Tamed.

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.

A Poet Needs To Keep His Wilderness Alive Inside Him.

The Ear Writes My Poems, Not The Mind.

A Longing For The Dance Stirs In The Buried Life.

...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.