Two Poems | "The Round", "The Layers"

Stanley Kunitz

The Tenth Poet Laureate of the United States- a quite observer of the intricate whorls of the human condition and its interactions with the universe- talks about the “human purpose” of poetry in our time. This answer, made in his trademark serious, measured tones, is excerpted from an interview hosted by the poet (and Kunitz’s former student) Gregory Orr - a magnificent wordsmith, and soul-seeker in his own right:

“Poetry is most deeply concerned with telling us what it feels like to be alive - alive at any given moment. In fact, if we go back historically, if we want to know how people felt, how they lived, how they responded to experience, we have to turn to the poets of the past. Before there were poets we have no evidence of what it was like to be a human being on this earth and they were the first, and they still are, I think, the most intimate relators of what it means to be living on this earth.

And then the other thought that occurs to me is that poetry in its own way is ultimately mythology. The telling of the stories of the soul in its adventure on the earth. (That’s simply saying in another form what I’ve already said but giving it a somewhat wider context)…”

- Stanley Kunitz responds to Gregory Orr’s question: What human purpose do you think poetry serves in our time?

The poems I share with you today, embody well, a sentiment expressed by the literary commentator David Barber about Kunitz’s poetry and outlook - "work with a lifetime steeped in it". We poets, and people generally caught in the vortex of alternating creative fervour and the crippling anxiety of the act of creation and living itself, think often, about the duty of the poet. What is to be done? I’ve written about this impulse, this perspective on the work of a poet. Here is a glimpse:

What the poet does

Every afternoon I sit at my table and write

For the last few days,
in the evening,
at six pm. sharp
the sun strides into my living room
pulls up a chair
and just looks at me,
without speaking.

I look up
pack up my words
and venture out
into the world.

Perhaps the only way we can make contact with another, or see their craft, their twinkle, is through our own interaction with the craft. As one writes about a thing, it becomes clearer, it loses some of its reticence and opens up slowly for us. Kunitz’s poem The Round, conveys with great simplicity, and the attention of someone who does things with precision and studied slowness, a perspective of this question of what the poet does. It is fascinating how the simple contours of his journey of observation and transmission, in its gradual testimony, is successful in communicating a truth that is much more profound that the seemingly mundane act of sitting down to write about the angle of light falling on windflowers outside - “with nothing for a view/ to tempt me/ but a bloated compost heap… under my window”.

He says “A curious gladness shook me”, and I join him in this celebration. So the poet watches, muses, and then writes… for whom? for no one but themself, and that is enough. But this act is not solitary. Writing about the experience of “being alive” - of the ‘journey’ (I am reminded, at this point, of that other inspirational masterpiece written in this vein - Mary Oliver’s The Journey), he illustrates the silver thread of connection, the soft comfort of community, and connection:

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

These two poems, together, outline a kind of golden quadrilateral - the relationship between the self and the universe, the self and work, and, the self and other selves within this world. These relationships opened up gradually for me as I traversed the length of Kunitz’s words several times, tracing my way back, and then, again, proceeding to the end. It was such a refreshingly epiphanic activity that I could not help but share it with you.

Do listen to Stanley Kunitz reading out The Layers, I have shared a link at the end of this post.