Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Kunitz, Stanley (Vol. 148) - Cynthia A. Davis (essay date Spring 1981)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Cynthia A. Davis (essay date Spring 1981)

SOURCE: “Stanley Kunitz and the Transubstantial World,” in Literary Review, Vol. 24, No. 3, Spring, 1981, pp. 413–26.

[In the following essay, Davis provides an overview of Kunitz's poetic development in Intellectual Things, Passport to the War, The Testing-Tree, Selected Poems, and The Poems of Stanley Kunitz. Davis refutes the view of Kunitz as a derivative poet, drawing attention to his recurring archetypal images, technical skill, and effort to mediate between personal experience and universal myth.]

Stanley Kunitz once said, “The originality of any poet consists to a considerable degree in finding those key images which forever haunt him, which make him different from others.”¹ The recent publication of The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928–1978 (Little, Brown and Company, 1979) offers the opportunity to trace those images in...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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