Criticism > Poetry > Kunitz, Stanley (Jasspon) - Stanley Kunitz with Cynthia Davis (interview date 1972)

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Stanley Kunitz with Cynthia Davis (interview date 1972)

SOURCE: An interview with Stanley Kunitz, in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter, 1974, pp. 1-14.

[In the following interview, which was conducted on March 9, 1972, at Kunitz's home in New York, Kunitz comments on a number of subjects pertinent to his work, including the relationship between poetry and myth, his poetic development, the function of intellect and passion in poetry, the poet's position in society, his influences, his aversion to being called a "confessional poet," and the themes of guilt, love, and life and death in his verse.]

[Davis]: Mr. Kunitz, you said once to a group of students studying your poetry that no one has the "right answers" in interpretation, and that after it's published the poem belongs as much to them as to you. Are you generally reluctant to explain your poems?

[Kunitz]: I often don't really know what a poem means, in...

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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