Stanley Kunitz

In honor of Stanley Kunitz

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pulitzer Prize-winner Stanley Kunitz, a former U.S. poet laureate remembered as a mentor to young writers and a devoted gardener, has died [Sunday May 14th, 2006] at the age of 100 in New York, his publisher said on Tuesday.... "You see that ability to make an experience so vivid and it translates somehow into the same capacity for understanding people's lives," Tree Swensen said....
~Claudia Parsons

hm. poets are fascinating people. yep... need to read more poetry. don't know enough. could learn so much from them...

"Touch Me"

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

One season only,

and it's done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

Former US poet laureate Stanley Kunitz dies at age 100