The artist has but one idea he is born with it and spends a lifetime developing it and making it breathe. –Henri Matisse Perhaps all of us spend a lifetime working a single idea, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Perhaps the dreams and images that continually speak to us are part of that [ Read more … ]
stanley kunitz
Do You Have a Key Image? Is it Real?
I had a disagreement with an old friend recently about whether the images and metaphors that show up in our subconscious are “real.” I believe, just like with dreams, that when images and metaphors show up in our lives, they have something to teach us and I don’t think my friend would argue with that. [ Read more … ]
Our Highest Visions
In 2001, in celebration of National Poetry Month, Robert Siegel (on NPR’s “All Things Considered”) asked the Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz whether poetry was a dying art. “No,” replied Kunitz, “in fact people are more involved with poetry now than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” Back in the 1970s, Kunitz wasn’t so optimistic. People [ Read more … ]
An Image Big Enough to Hold You
There was a child went forth every day. And the first object he looks upon, that object he became. –Walt Whitman The late poet Stanley Kunitz believed that writers often have a “key image” that keeps working them over and over again in their writing. In fact, writers may spend an entire lifetime working one [ Read more … ]