Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected

by Stanley Kunitz

"Winner of the 1995 National Book Award, Passing Through confirms that the venerable doyen of American poetry is still a poet in his prime."—Atlantic Monthly

Stanley Kunitz, one of the masters of contemporary poetry, presents his ninth collection, gathering a rich selection of his work, including new poems that remind us of his prefatory statement: "Art is the chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence." Nearly all the poems of Kunitz's later years, beginning with The Testing-Tree (1971), are included, and most of the poems in Passing Through are unavailable in any other edition.

In "Touch Me," the last poem in the collection, Kunitz propounds a question, "What makes the engine go?" and gives us his answer: "Desire, desire, desire." These poems fairly hum with the energy, the excitement, the ardor, that make Kunitz one of our most enduring and highly honored poets. In the words of Carolyn Forché, "he is a living treasure."

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.

Reviews

[Book2Dragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always loved the poetry of Stanley Kunitz, but I cannot remember why. I think he was read at every poetry workshop I went to. But I got most of the way through this book (except for one poem) before I began loving his poetry again.
A good poem nearly made me cry-about a beached whale. Beautifully written but heartbreaking nonetheless. This one is beautifuuly written but still hard to decipher.
The Sea, That Has No Ending
(by Stanley Kunitz)

Who are we? Why are we here,
huddled on this desolate shore,
so curiously chopped and joined?—
broken totems, a scruffy tribe!
How many years have passed
since we owned keys to a door,
had friends, walked down familiar streets
and answered to a name? We try
not to remember the places
where we left pieces of ourselves
along the way, whether in ditches
at the side of foreign roads
or under signs that spell FOR HIRE
or naked between the sheets in cheap
motels. Does anybody care?
Let's just say I like my poetry accessible, and there are a few of those here, in the last chapter of the book mainly. At the end I found in the back "NOTES," which I wish I had known were there to start with. It may have made it more enjoyable for me. One thing I've found with poetry for me is my mood really alters how much I enjoy the poem. Far be it from me to criticize one of the best poets of the 20th century.

[Ru Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

That a white Jewish man can write poetry that resonates with a brown Sri Lankan woman; this is a beautiful thing. It affirms, for me, the transforming power of words.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to this volume by the National Book Award Poetry Blog, where this volume was reviewed last year during last year's past-winners retrospective. Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected won the NBA for poetry in 1995.

The poet was 90 when these were published, and he went on to live to be 100 years old! Many of the poems look back- at childhood, at life, but my absolute favorite is The Layers, which ends with the line "I am not done with my changes.". You can listen to the poet read it; to me, hearing the words in such an aging voice makes it even more meaningful, as much as it resonates with me at 1/3 of his age at the time.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of poems I want to hold on to forever. Kunitz reaffirmed how powerful, affecting and healing words can be. Some poems made me sob. "Journal For My Daughter", "King of the River" and "Passing Through" are ones I will think about for a while.

Below is "King of the River" — about the washed-ashore Pacific salmon which degenerates into an aged, almost lifeless fish. The same geriatric process happens in humans, too, in some 20-40 years.

“You have become a ship for parasites.
The great clock of your life
is slowing down, and the small clocks run wild.
For this you were born.

You have tasted the fire on your tongue
till it is swollen black with a prophetic joy:
“Burn with me!
The only music is time,
the only dance is love.”

On the threshold
of the last mystery,
at the brute absolute hour,
you have looked into the eyes of your creature self,
which are glazed with madness, and you say
he is not broken but endures,
limber and firm
in the state of his shining,
forever inheriting his salt kingdom,
from which he is banished
forever.”

[Sally Boots · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second half of the book is better than the first. It's refreshing to read a poet who has the wisdom of age. Kunitz is (was) like a wise old tree.

[Marie Zenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

so many gems

[T. B. Vittini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection.

THE PORTRAIT

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

THE LONG BOAT

When his boat snapped loose
from its moorings, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

THE LAYERS

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

THE ABDUCTION

Some things I do not profess
to understand, perhaps
not wanting to, including
whatever it was they did
with you or you with them
that timeless summer day
when you stumbled out of the wood,
distracted, with your white blouse torn
and a bloodstain on your skirt.
“Do you believe?” you asked.
Between us, through the years,
from bits, from broken clues,
we pieced enough together
to make the story real:
how you encountered on the path
a pack of sleek, grey hounds,
trailed by a dumbshow retinue
in leather shrouds; and how
you were led, through leafy ways,
into the presence of a royal stag,
flaming in his chestnut coat,
who kneeled on a swale of moss
before you; and how you were borne
aloft in triumph through the green,
stretched on his rack of budding horn,
till suddenly you found yourself alone
in a trampled clearing.

That was a long time ago,
almost another age, but even now,
when I hold you in my arms,
I wonder where you are.
Sometimes I wake to hear
the engines of the night thrumming
outside the east bay window
on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.
You lie beside me in elegant repose,
a hint of transport hovering on your lips
indifferent to the harsh green flares
that swivel through the room,
searchlights controlled by unseen hands.
Out there is childhood country,
bleached faces peering in
with coals for eyes.
Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?

PASSING THROUGH
—on my seventy-ninth birthday

Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries.
In the secrecy of my room
I would not admit I cared
that my friends were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren’t for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother’s address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I’d have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.
Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don’t take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

THE UNQUIET ONES

Years ago I lost
both my parents’ addresses.
Father and mother lie
in their neglected cribs,
obscure as moles,
unvisited.
I do not need to summon them.
When I put out the light
I hear them stir, dissatisfied,
in their separate places,
in death as in life
remote from each other,
having no conversation
except in the common ground
of their son’s mind.
They slip through narrow crevices
and, suddenly blown tall,
glide into my cave of phantoms,
unwelcome guests, but not
unloved, dark emissaries
of the two-faced god.

MY SISTERS

Who whispered, souls have shapes?
So has the wind, l say.
But l don’t know,
I only feel things blow.

I had two sisters once
with long black hair
who walked apart from me
and wrote the history of tears.
Their story’s faded with their names,
but the candlelight they carried,
like dancers in a dream,
still flickers on their gowns
as they bend over me
to comfort my night-fears.

Let nothing grieve you,
Sarah and Sophia.
Shush, shush, my dears,
now and forever.

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.

THE SYSTEM

That pack of scoundrels
tumbling through the gate
emerges
as the Order of the State.

KING OF THE RIVER

If the water were clear enough,
if the water were still,
but the water is not clear,
the water is not still,
you would see yourself,
slipped out of your skin,
nosing upstream,
slapping, thrashing,
tumbling
over the rocks
till you paint them
with your belly’s blood:
Finned Ego,
yard of muscle that coils, uncoils.

If the knowledge were given you,
but it is not given,
for the membrane is clouded
with self-deceptions
and the iridescent image swims
through a mirror that flows,
you would surprise yourself
in that other flesh
heavy with milt,
bruised, battering toward the dam
that lips the orgiastic pool.

Come. Bathe in these waters.
Increase and die.

If the power were granted you
to break out of your cells,
but the imagination fails
and the doors of the senses close
on the child within,
you would dare to be changed,
as you are changing now,
into the shape you dread
beyond the merely human.
A dry fire eats you.
Fat drips from your bones.
The flutes of your gills discolor.
You have become a ship for parasites.
The great clock of your life
is slowing down,
and the small clocks run wild.
For this you were born.
You have cried to the wind
and heard the wind’s reply:
“I did not choose the way,
the way chose me.”
You have tasted the fire on your tongue
till it is swollen black
with a prophetic joy:

“Burn with me!
The only music is time,
the only dance is love.”

If the heart were pure enough,
but it is not pure,
you would admit
that nothing compels you
any more, nothing
at all abides,
but nostalgia and desire,
the two-way ladder
between heaven and hell.
On the threshold
of the last mystery,
at the brute absolute hour,
you have looked into the eyes
of your creature self,
which are glazed with madness,
and you say
he is not broken but endures,
limber and firm
in the state of his shining,
forever inheriting his salt kingdom,
from which he is banished
forever.

[Bill Keefe · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are wonderful poems. Probing poems into a life and life itself. They open Kunitz to the reader and the reader to intimacy, to pain, struggle, living, in rich detail. The newer poems, written late in his life astound. Taught. Spare. Rich. "Summer is late, my heart." Words stolen from his youth work magic to open our eyes to his, and our, later years.

He refers often to magic and magicians. He knows of what he speaks.

[Tracy O · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just GREAT. If you like poetry you will LOVE this book. Where do I even begin? The Catch is wonderful, The Layers, The Knot, An Old Cracked Tune, Passing Through, Touch Me, and the Testing Tree are all amazing. From the Testing Tree:

In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess the phrase would be "often imitated...etc." While some people may lament contemporary poetry seeming to have lost lofty values and instead become too self-examining and, I guess, too self-congratulatory, look to any Kunitz imitator to find the reason why poetry has taken that turn. Yes, Kunitz offers some poems from a lofty tone, examining our souls and our sense of meaning, but I feel his method only got better with age, as I find much of his early work more in the spirit of SOUNDING like lofty poems than actually being convincingly so. As a result, those who pine for the seeming drop in quality of contemporary poetry lament more the loss of a particular style of presentation than poetry, and clearly these people haven't really read Stanley Kunitz.

I must admit I was just a little lackadaisical going through the first half of this collection that features selections from some later books and some new poems. But the latter half, right into the newer poems, were not only some winners I've loved, like "Halley's Comet" and "Passing Through," but in general the way Kunitz can take lofty tones while addressing the universal and the personal, examining our connection to nature but also examining his own attraction to others, are really magnificent. Many of the poets disparaged by the Silver Tower folks, like Mary Oliver and Lucille Clifton, adore Kunitz, and the proof is how they carry forward with his ideas about what makes a poem, with their own view of things and their own ways of presenting them, not some kind of re-hash of 'poetic language.' Thank you, Stanley, and all speed to you.

[David Burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE LONG BOAT - By: Stanley Kunitz

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oZlj...

Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected ** Read in Dubai and Eastern Province, KSA (Sep-Oct 2023)

[Kurly Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

siri, queue Passing Through (Live) by Leonard Cohen

some fuckin bars scattered throughout this one

"He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever."

yes Stanley, yes bro

my friend Rachel came over to my apartment during my first trip back to Portland after sickness. I'd already moved pretty much everything into storage. the place was bare. sitting on my mattress on the floor, she read "The Layers" to me, which i'd never heard before, and i fell in love with her a little bit, and the poem resonated deeply. Had been searching for this collection ever since, and finally found it this morning in a random Eugene bookstore. read the whole thing on my train back that was delayed from a 2.5hr journey to 4hrs. life is hard and inconvenient and wonderful and there is synchronicity in the air !!

[Christen Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a lovely, far-ranging selection.

Though I’m partial to Kunitz’s later work, there is beauty and revelation at each turning here.

“The Round” is a luminous treasure:

“on the blotted page:
‘Light splashed…’

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.”

[Laura Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kunitz is proof that there is no shelf-life on creativity, no time-stamp on curiosity or insight. If anyone out there ever told him, "You're a little old to be a poet," he obviously didn't listen. Thank heavens.

[Marrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most influential selections of prose I've ever read. Pulled me from feeling alone in my circumstance at the time, made me feel seen in the pages and simultaneously aware of others' human experiences around me.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poem about the whale and snakes in the garden stick in the mind; otherwise, I found many in this collection to be a bit wandering and forgettable.

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every poem is a keeper, and I never say that.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tragically beautiful, o father where art thou

[Amey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Artist (on Mark Rothko)

His paintings grew darker every year.
They filled the walls, they filled the room;
eventually they filled his world -
all but the ravishment.
When voices faded, he would rush to hear
the scratched soul of Mozart
endlessly in gyre.
Back and forth, back and forth,
he paced the paint-smeared floor,
diminishing in size each time he turned,
trapped in his monumental void,
raving against his adversaries.
At last he took a knife in his hand
and slashed an exit for himself
between the frames of his tall scenery.
Through the holes of his tattered universe
the first innocence and the light
came pouring in.

~ from the book

The Layers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHeGz...

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face,
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

~ from the book

[Cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband saw a news piece on poet Stanley Kunitz in 2000 when he was named as Poet Laurate at the age of 94. He got me this book that Christmas.
It is a charming, touching collection. "The Layers" is my favorite of the bunch. As these are his later poems they are filled with reminiscence and wonderful imagery and memories.

About his own work, Kunitz has said: “The poem comes in the form of a blessing—‘like rapture breaking on the mind,’ as I tried to phrase it in my youth. Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life-enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.”

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kunitz is just great. This collection is really good. He reminds me if Richard Wilbur, not in terms of content, but in the fact that his facility with language is inexhaustible. Every poem offers a new challenge and new angle. I could do without the sometimes heavy leaning on allusion for some poems, like "Proteus," but that's probably just an idiosyncratic thing on my part. I enjoy literary allusions but I think poems should be self contained and not rely on them fundamentally. But no worries, there are only one or two here. "Halley's Comet," "Touch Me," and "My Mothers Pears," are all fabulous just to name a few.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not something that I found spoke to me, though I love the genuine truthful voice of the poet. He shines from each page. So deeply personal and affecting. I loved loved loved the last poem "Touch Me."

[Marlies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another favorite poet

[Alexa Cascade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the best of the late Stanley Kunitz's later work.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read him for a class, am grateful to come to know his work, and especially for his book of interviews.

[Sunni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Kunitz seems like this wise old man whose mind is always sharper and who feeds on detail. There are poems in this collection I think about often.

[Jann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stanley Kunitz is just plain brilliant. Reviewing his poetry would be way too presumptuous of me. But he is one of my top five favorite poets. (Currently, my very favorite).

[B.D. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. Could not understand this dude's imagery or symbolism.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Kunitz. A great collection of poems written later in life. Some are from other collections, some are first published here, including the title poem.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my absolutely favorite poets. The Layers may be my favorite poem of all time.