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I admit that I had not read much of Stanley Kunitz’s poetry before hearing of his death recently on the radio. But as a reader and a former student of poetry, I had heard the name many times, perhaps from one of the many books he edited as well as wrote. My collection of poetry at home contains none of his books and I found only a few of his poems in my wife’s copy of the Norton Anthology of American Poetry.

My reaction after the radio story, like many people when a public figure dies, was to quickly familiarize myself with works and life of Stanley Kunitz. I am glad I did. I still do not know much more about his life, except that he was an avid gardener, almost fervent in fact, and wrote at least one book about it called The Wild Braid. He also served in World War II after his request for conscientious objector status was denied, taught at a few colleges and published a book called Intellectual Things in 1930 that did not receive any particular notice. He was the husband of the painter Elise Asher who passed away in 2004.

Most notably, of course, is his poetry. I have at this time only read what I have in the house, what I mentioned above. And rather than attempt to analyze or expound upon it, a task I am hardly qualified for, I think I’d rather just post one of my favorites here and let you enjoy it as it is. The following is called “The War Against the Trees”:

The War Against the Trees
The man who sold his lawn to standard oil
Joked with his neighbors come to watch the show
While the bulldozers, drunk with gasoline,
Tested the virtue of the soil
Under a branchy sky
By overthrowing first the privet-row.

Forsythia-forays and hydrangea-raids
Were but preliminaries to a war
Against the great-grandfathers of the town,
So freshly lopped and maimed.
They struck and struck again,
And with each elm a century went down.

All day the hireling engines charged the trees,
Subverting them by hacking underground
In grub-dominions, where dark summer’s mole
Rampages through his halls,
Till a northern seizure shook
Those crowns, forcing the giants to their knees.

I saw the ghosts of children at their games
Racing beyond their childhood in the shade,
And while the green world turned its death-foxed page
And a red wagon wheeled,
I watched them disappear
Into the suburbs of their grievous age.

Ripped from the craters much too big for hearts
The club-roots bared their amputated coils,
Raw gorgons matted blind, whose pocks and scars
Cried Moon! on a corner lot
One witness-moment, caught
In the rear-view mirrors of the passing cars.

The quote in the design is from his poem “Halley’s Comet” from his book Passing Through published in 1995.

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