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How Shall The Heart Be Reconciled / To Its Feast Of Losses?

-Stanley Kunitz

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How Shall The Heart

Stanley Kunitz

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How Shall The Heart Be Reconciled / To Its Feast Of Losses?

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Be What You Are. Give What Is Yours To Give. Have Style. Dare.

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

The First Task Of The Poet Is To Create The Person Who Will Write The Poems.

A Longing For The Dance Stirs In The Buried Life.

A Poet Needs To Keep His Wilderness Alive Inside Him.

Forward My Mail To Mars.

I Dance/for The Joy Of Surviving, At The Edge Of The Road.

You Must Be Careful Not To Deprive The Poem Of Its Wild Origin.

The Universe Is A Continuous Web. Touch It At Any Point And The Whole Web Quivers.

Writer's Block Is A Natural Affliction. Writers Who Have Never Experienced It Have Something Wrong With Them. It Means There Isn't Enough Friction-that They Aren't Making Enough Of An Effort To Reconcile The Contradictions Of Life. All You Get Is Sweet Monotonous Flow. Writer's Block Is Nothing To Commit Suicide Over. It Simply Indicates Some Imbalance Between Your Experience And Your Art, And I Think That's Constructive.

Poetry Is Ultimately Mythology, The Telling Of Stories Of The Soul. The Old Myths, The Old Gods, The Old Heroes Have Never Died. They Are Only Sleeping At The Bottom Of Our Minds, Waiting For Our Call. We Have Need Of Them, For In Their Sum They Epitomize The Wisdom And Experience Of The Race.

The Ear Writes My Poems, Not The Mind.

Memory Is Each Man's Poet-in-residence.

To Conquer A Piece Of Earth And Make It As Beautiful As One Can Dream Of It Being: That Is Art, Too. A Man Cannot Be Separated From The Earth. I Come Out Of The Garden Every Day Feeling, Oh, Inspired In A Way That One Needs In Order To Convert The Daily-ness Of The Life Into Something Greater Than That Little Life Itself.

Darling, Do You Remember The Man You Married? Touch Me, Remind Me Who I Am.

When You Look Back On A Lifetime And Think Of What Has Been Given To The World By Your Presence, Your Fugitive Presence, Inevitably You Think Of Your Art, Whatever It May Be, As The Gift You Have Made To The World In Acknowledgment Of The Gift You Have Been Given, Which Is The Life Itself... That Work Is Not An Expression Of The Desire For Praise Or Recognition, Or Prizes, But The Deepest Manifestation Of Your Gratitiude For The Gift Of Life.

My Mother Never Forgave My Father

We Have All Been Expelled From The Garden, But The Ones Who Suffer Most In Exile Are Those Who Are Still Permitted To Dream Of Perfection.

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.

Live In The Layers, Not On The Litter.

Poetry Today Is Easier To Write But Harder To Remember.

In Every House Of Marriage There's Room For An Interpreter.

Deftly They Opened The Brain Of A Child, And It Was Full Of Flying Dreams.

...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.

I Have Walked Through Many Lives, Some Of Them My Own, And I Am Not Who I Was, Though Some Principle Of Being Abides, From Which I Struggle Not To Stray.

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.

In A Murderous Time/the Heart Breaks And Breaks/and Lives By Breaking.

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

What Makes The Engine Go? Desire, Desire, Desire.

A Poem Has Secrets That The Poet Knows Nothing Of.

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The Poem In The Head Is Always Perfect. Resistance Begins When You Try To Convert It Into Language.

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I Can Hardly Wait For Tomorrow, It Means A New Life For Me Each And Every Day.

The Poem Comes In The Form Of A Blessing, Like Rapture Breaking On The Mind.

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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.

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Poetry Is The Enemy Of The Poem.

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.

How Shall The Heart Be Reconciled / To Its Feast Of Losses?

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The Heart Breaks And Breaks And Lives By Breaking It Is Necessary To Go Through Dark And Deeper Dark And Not To Turn

I Like An Ending That's Both A Door And A Window.

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