Conversations with Stanley Kunitz by Ljungquist Kent P

Author:Ljungquist, Kent P.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2013-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Interview: Stanley Kunitz

Madeleine Beckman / 1982

From Minetta Review (New York University Literary Magazine) [1982]: 13–18. Reprinted by permission of Madeleine Beckman.

Stanley Kunitz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, is a tall, thin, white-haired gentleman. This summer he will turn seventy-seven. The following interview was conducted in his Greenwich Village apartment, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, surrounded by his paintings, antiques, and plants.

MB: You were Poetry Consultant for two years. What does the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress do?

SK: The consultant’s duties are not clearly defined. He’s a presence in the library, he or she as the case may be. Duties are pretty much what the consultant decides on his own. There’s a series of readings at the Library that the consultant arranges. There’s also an archive of poetry recordings, the most comprehensive in existence, to which he is empowered to make additions. He invites poets for readings and recordings. He also has a good deal of contact with poets all over the country who want information about grants, publishing, copyright, that sort of thing. He has an office there, with a permanent staff. In the capital he is the national representative of the world of literature. There he is, on tap, whenever anything goes on in Washington that requires an official poet (laugh). It’s a busy place. The consultant finds out, after wondering how on earth to fill the hours, that he has almost no time for his own work. The chores pile up. Visiting writers, especially from abroad, are immediately shuttled to the Library to be received by the consultant. A sort of papal blessing.

MB: When was the last year you held that post?

SK: I think 1976.

MB: Did they elect you for a third time?

SK: Two years are generally considered enough. One year is the term of the original appointment. If you are asked to stay on, you haven’t obviously disgraced yourself.

MB: Have there been other posts similar to Poetry Consultant which you have been elected to?

SK: That post is unique. But I’m also one of the twelve chancellors of the Academy of American Poets and one of the fifty members of the Academy of Arts and Letters, which is modeled on the Académie française. I succeeded to the chair of John Crowe Ransom on his death. These are honors, to be sure, but nobody in this country pays attention to them. Rightly so, I suppose.

MB: Do you feel your academic involvements have contributed to your poetry?

SK: Actually, I have less academic involvement than most American poets. I didn’t become a teacher of poetry until twenty years after I left Harvard and weathered the Depression. I did newspaper and editorial work, freelanced, and lived on farms in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. When I fell into teaching, it was not with any desire to become a permanent member of the academic community. To this day I have never accepted tenure.

MB: Why?

SK: Poetry requires some sense of discontentment, insecurity, danger. It’s been said that poetry is the language of crisis. I think of it as an adversary enterprise with respect to the mainstream of our culture.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.