As I contemplated this week’s Poetry Daily poems, the piece that stuck with me the most was Michael Longley’s “Visiting Stanly Kunitz”. Having never read any of Stanly Kunitz’s works myself, I nevertheless came away from the poem with a deep appreciation and almost reverence for Kunitz. The fact that Longley was able to impress his own picture of Kunitz in such an effective and meaningful way is quite impressive.
In painting the picture of Longley’s encounter with Kunitz, Longley is also able to impart ideas and ruminations on life in general, and the subtle beauty one poet can bring into the world. In the fewest possible words, the poem is about the author’s visit with the renowned American poet, Stanley Kunitz. Longley describes brief moments he shared with Kunitz from the protracted signing of Kunitz’s book to the old man’s “age-spots”, and yet through these seemingly minute details Longley is able to convey Kunitz’s entire personality to an entirely unfamiliar reader such as myself (line 23).
The most obvious mechanism Longley employs in the construction of this poem is the use of flowers as an elongated metaphor. He mentions numerous flowers and plants from mountain everlasting to goose grass, and each one of these flowers helps to explain and uncover a different part of Kunitz. The flower comparisons begin rather straightforwardly with the yellow bog asphodel, used to describe Kunitz’s shirt, but the then the metaphor begins to attack the deeper more intangible qualities that blend together to constitute Kunitz. As the narrator says, “[his] zimmer-gavotte suggests / Madder” (lines 21-22). That is to say, Kunitz’s walker-dance of sorts is like the bright yellow Madder flower. This simple sentence and comparison relays a world about Kunitz’s character with the simple image of an old man, “who’ll be a hundred soon,” dancing in his walker like a bright, spring flower (line 13). The author goes on to describe this distinct dance as goose grass, a thick and wiry plant that is nearly indestructible. In doing so, Longley conveys all the “tenacity” and strength within Kunitz without using more than three words and a simple image (line 23). Other images along the flower metaphor include the comparison of Kunitz’s age spots to the mudwort flower, which is able to endure and blossom in mud. Like a delicate, white flower growing out of mud, Kunitz’s age spots have a unique beauty to them in that they come from a hard and arduous history or hard work. They are the product of all his toil, his mud, and are therefore beautiful. The author also speaks of Kunitz “grow[ing] anemones,” an image which I found representative of Kunitz’s poems (line 8). As the author notes, anemones (essentially buttercups) are known in Greek as the “wind flower” or “daughter of the wind”. To me, this conjured images of the wind carrying and blowing petals across the world just as Kunitz’s poetry has spread out around the world.
Sitting above all these smaller flower metaphors is the greater metaphor of Kunitz as a “spring gentian” (line 6). A gentian is a flower generally comprised of five petals that are a bright, almost electric blue, or as the narrator says, a “heavenly / (Strictly speaking) blue” (lines 6-7). In the very beginning of the poem, the author speaks of honoring the gentian with Kunitz, but ultimately, the poem is itself a celebration of Kunitz (the blue gentian). Nearly all of the other flower metaphors in the poem refer in some way to Kunitz’s old age, but at the end of the poem Longley breaks from his ruminations on the old poet’s age to concentrate solely on the fresh, young beauty of the gentian (Kunitz). As he says, “no, no. Let it be / Spring gentian, summer sky / at sunset, Athene’s eyes, / Five petals, earthbound star” (lines 25-28). In essence, the author ignores Kunitz’s age and sums up Kunitz as a beautiful and lovely “earthbound star” that we on earth have been privileged enough to experience (line 28). Interestingly enough, the lines in which Longley concentrates on Kunitz’s age though the flower metaphor (lines 19-24) all have seven syllables in them, but as soon as the author brings the poem back to the blue gentian with a “no, no,” the meter changes to six syllables per line (line 25). In this way the meter of the poem subtlety mirrors the subject of the poem.
I came away from this compact poem with a clear image not only of Stanley Kunitz, but also the spirit of Stanly Kunitz. The beauty of the poem is that all this is expressed in precise but powerful comparisons to particular plants and an overarching flower metaphor. Longley is able to convey the essence of one man in just 28 short lines, and in my mind, that is quite a remarkable accomplishment.
Link to "Visiting Stanley Kunitz" by Michael Longley
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