I have walked through many lives,_x000D_ some of them my own,_x000D_ and I am not who I was,_x000D_ though some principle of being_x000D_ abides, from which I struggle_x000D_ not to stray.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on personal growth and the evolution of identity over time.
In this quote, Stanley Kunitz expresses the idea that throughout life, one experiences different identities and perspectives, shaped by various experiences. Though he acknowledges that he has changed and can no longer be defined by his past selves, he recognizes a fundamental essence or principle that remains constant, indicating a struggle to remain true to this core identity amidst the changes.
In practice
This quote can be used in a graduation speech to inspire students about their ongoing journey of self-discovery.
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.
Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.
...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.
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.
I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.
The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it.
To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards
Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.