An Interview with Stanley Kunitz

Abstract

INT.: Your first book of poems, Intellectual Things, was published in 1930. What are your reflections on continuing to write poems seriously for almost 50 years? S.K.: suppose my main feeling is that writing poetry, for me, has been like breathing. It has been the condition of my existence. I've never considered surviving without poetry. The first poems come to you out of nowhere. You don't know that you are a vessel; all you know is that you have poems that have to be written. Later, those early poems seem completely extra ordinary because you realize that you were a terribly immature person emotionally. think most people in their early or mid-twenties are not ready to take the mantle of over their shoulders and say I am a poet. It's a littie ridiculous to make that assumption at that time in your life?it may be ridiculous at any time. think of one's feeling for language as a kind of prehensile thing; it must be in the genes. You don't know why you're writing poems, any more than a cat knows why it claws at the bark of a tree, but you're doing it. Because you have to do it. And your intellectual life, such as it is at that stage, is really something separate from your feeling for the language itself. Basically, the young poet has to model himself on the poets whom he loves, preferably not from those who happen to be in fashion at the moment. INT.: If remember correctly, the only poet you mention explicitly in any of your poems is Marvell. There is a definite affinity to the metaphysical poets in that first volume. Would you say that was your initial influence? S.K.: was mad about the metaphysical poets. During the time when started writing seriously, was at Harvard, studying primarily with John Livings ton Lowes. In the background were Irving Babbitt, whom also worked with and who, thought was an enemy of everything believed in, and Kittridge, who was the great scholiast of the period. But Lowes was the one who really taught poetry, and his faith was in the Romantic poets, as was mine initially. There wasn't even a course in the metaphysical poets. So came upon them independently, and they seemed closest to that par ticular quality of voice and mind that cared about. INT.: One thing that strikes me in reading your first volume is your attraction to forms. Wasn't part of Eliot and Pound's influence at the time to break strict form? S.K.: The poems in Intellectual Things date from 1927, when was 22. It's true that Eliot came to notice about 1916 or so, and so did Pound, with their first writings, but they had no reputation in the academic or general world. proposed writing my master's thesis at Harvard on the techniques