Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Kunitz, Stanley (Vol. 148) - Calvin Bedient (review date Winter 1988)

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Calvin Bedient (review date Winter 1988)

SOURCE: “The Wild Braid of Creation,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. XCVI, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 137–49.

[In the following excerpt, Bedient discusses aspects of “strangeness” and the imagery of animals and elements in Next-to-Last Things.]

In poetry strangeness is essential, whether of word, figure, or development. It is inseparable from the intense concentration that justifies special linear and rhythmic dispositions of language; these dispositions, in turn, cast an eclipse-strange light back on the words. Prose is daylight, poetry entering or emerging from the dark of the moon. …

I have written as if strangeness ought to be potent in poetry—both strong and fertile. What of the authority of Stanley Kunitz, who seems to imply otherwise when he asks what at his age (the date was 1977, when he was seventy-two) is “left for you to confront but the great simplicities. … I want to...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Stanley Kunitz with Cynthia Davis (interview date 1972)
   2. Robert Weisberg (essay date Spring 1975)
   3. Andrew Motion (review date 2 November 1979)
   4. Vernon Young (review date 22 November 1979)
   5. Alan Brownjohn (review date April 1980)
   6. Peter Stitt (review date September 1980)
   7. Cynthia A. Davis (essay date Spring 1981)
   8. Gregory Orr (essay date 1985)
   9. James Idema (review date 22 December 1985)
   10. Thomas D'Evelyn (essay date 6 March 1987)
   11. Elizabeth Kastor (essay date 12 May 1987)
   12. Calvin Bedient (review date Winter 1988)
   13. Stanley Kunitz with Peter Stitt (interview date 1990)
   14. Michael Ryan (essay date 1993)
   15. Susan Mitchell (essay date 1993)
   16. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 9–23 October 1995)
   17. A. V. Christie (review date 31 December 1995)
   18. Stanley Kunitz with Bill Moyers (interview date 1995)
   19. David Yezzi (review date 1996)
   20. Judith Kitchen (review date Summer 1996)
   21. John Taylor (review date February 1997)
   22. Stanley Kunitz with Gary Pacernick (interview date Fall 1997)
   23. Fred Moramarco and William Sullivan (essay date 1998)
   24. Linton Weeks (essay date 29 July 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright