Criticism > Poetry > Kunitz, Stanley (Jasspon) - David Wagoner (review date 1958)

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David Wagoner (review date 1958)

SOURCE: "The Thirty Years' War," in Poetry, Vol. 93, No. 3, December, 1958, pp. 174-78.

[In the following essay, Wagoner predicts that the publication of Selected Poems, 1928-1958 will bring an end to critical neglect of Kunitz's poetry.]

One of the most depressing literary curiosities of the past three decades has been the neglect of Stanley Kunitz's poetry. His earlier books—Intellectual Things (1930) and Passport to the War (1944)—received uniformly high praise from reviewers (for the single exception, see his poem "A Choice of Weapons," but serious critical attention appeared to stop there. Now, at last, the Selected Poems 1928-1958 marks what will surely be the end of Kunitz's quiet Thirty Years' War for a place among the very best poets of our time. Let us hope that the Peace of Westphalia will be celebrated in anthologies and perhaps even on the most important prize...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Poetry (review date 1930)
   2. Mark Schorer (review date 1944)
   3. David Wagoner (review date 1958)
   4. Harvey Gross (essay date 1965)
   5. Jean H. Hagstrum (essay date 1967)
   6. Stanley Moss (review date 1971)
   7. Stanley Kunitz with Cynthia Davis (interview date 1972)
   8. Stanley Kunitz with Robert Boyers (interview date 1972)
   9. Robert Weisburg (essay date 1975)
   10. James Finn Cotter (review date 1980)
   11. Gregory Orr (review date 1980)
   12. Stanley Kunitz (essay date 1984)
   13. Stanley Kunitz with Peter Stitt (interview date 1990)
   14. David Barber (review date 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. How to Analyze a Poem
2. Poetry