Poet Stanley Kunitz at 100
Stanley Kunitz is considered by many to be America's greatest living poet. Ted Rosenberg hide caption
Over his lifetime, poet Stanley Kunitz has received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and the National Medal of the Arts. He has also served as the nation's poet laureate... twice. As Kunitz turns 100, independent producer Joe Richman of Radio Diaries visits the poet in Provincetown, Mass.
About Stanley Kunitz
1905: Born in Worcester, Mass.
1927: Master's in English from Harvard University
1930: Intellectual Things, his first book of poems, published
1959: Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems, 1928-1958
1974-1976: Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a precursor to the Poet Laureate position)
1993: National Medal of the Arts
1995: National Book Award for Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected
2000-2001: U.S. Poet Laureate
Kunitz reads from his poem, "The Long Boat."
The Long Boat
When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
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he wanted to stay forever.
From The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine, W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
