Stanley Kunitz - Passing Through: The Later Poems (1995)

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Art is that chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence.

Stanley Kunitz

The poem comes in the form of a blessing — "like rapture breaking on the mind" — as I tried to phrase it in my youth. Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life-enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.

Stanley Kunitz

Poetry, I have insisted, is ultimately mythology, the telling of the stories of the soul.

Stanley Kunitz