Criticism > Poetry > Kunitz, Stanley (Jasspon) - Gregory Orr (review date 1980)

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Gregory Orr (review date 1980)

SOURCE: A review of Poems of Stanley Kunitz: 1928–1978, in American Poetry Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, July/August, 1980, pp. 36–41.

[Orr explores what he identifies as Kunitz's major theme: the son's quest for the father.]

If Stanley Kunitz is a major poet, then he must have a major theme. What is that theme? Something that for the moment I'll call "the son's quest for the father." As all authentic major themes of this century must, it represents a fusion of personal crisis with an impersonal, universal significance. For the process of fusing personal and impersonal, the phrase Kunitz uses in relation to his own work is "to convert life into legend." I would assert that there must be a certain balance between the personal and impersonal in such an endeavor. In terms of the father-quest theme, Kunitz's early work (Selected Poems) is weighted toward the impersonal, and it is only in The...

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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