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After the Last Dynasty (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

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Kunitz's early reference in “After the Last Dynasty” to Chinese poet Li Po (701-762 c.e.), from the T’ang Dynasty, brings to mind his poetry. Li Po, from China's Szechuan province, was known for the delicacy of his verse and for both his frequent references to flower petals and his water imagery.

Kunitz's work is a love poem but an ironic one. It was written just as his marriage to Eleanor Evans, his second wife and the mother of his daughter, Gretchen, was crumbling. The poem, like “River Road” from the same period, breaks from the iambic lines so prevalent in...

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