Stanley Kunitz: The Collected Poems
Born in 1905, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stanley Kunitz lived to be 100 years old. His later poems, beginning with The Testing Tree in 1971, were less philosophical and more personal than his early efforts. Some of my favorites from this period include “My Mother’s Pears,” “Halley’s Comet,” “Snakes of September,” and “Days of Foreboding,” but there are many more; in “The Unquiet Ones” he addresses the deaths of his parents and in “The Round,” expresses his love of gardening, poetry, and life. Kunitz wasn’t averse to confronting the shadow side of the personality or the dark side of history — his father committed suicide before he was born and he commented that the Holocaust was “the basic subtext of much of his work.” Twenty-five years after its publication, The Collected Poems remains relevant in today’s polycrisis for its penetrating gaze at beauty, love, and loss. “What do we know beyond the rapture and the dread?” he asked. (The Collected Poems, Stanley Kunitz, W.W. Norton & Co., 2000)
Rewilding the River Basin
Thousands of native wildflower seeds, hand collected and planted by Yurok tribe members and volunteers, are thriving along the Klamath River after a spectacular show of color this spring. Over 2,200 acres, submerged for decades by four recently removed dams, are part of an ongoing restoration project along the river basin. Some of the flowers that can be found there are California poppies, lupine, buttercups, tiger lilies, asters, larkspur, and orchids. www.oregonstater.org, www.oregonstate.edu
Opportunities
Blessing the Boats Selections, sponsored by BOA Editions, is offering a $1500 prize and publication for a full-length collection of poetry by a woman of color who lives in the US. Named after Lucille Clifton’s award-winning collection, the series will be judged this year by Evie Shockley. Manuscripts must be at least 65 pages in length. (There’s no entry fee.) www.boaeditions.org
Stony Brook Southhampton is sponsoring a short fiction prize for undergraduates. The winner will receive a prize of $1,000, a scholarship to the Southampton Writer’s conference, and possible publication in the Southhampton Review. The contest is open to undergrads in the US and Canada. (There’s no entry fee.) www.stonybrook.edu
Palette Poetry, an online journal, is open for submissions year round for its Featured Poet category. Payment is $50-150 per poem. Aiming for diversity, they welcome “new and emerging” poets. (There’s no fee for this category.) www.palettepoetry.com
Assembling a Poetry Collection
For tips on assembling a poetry collection, see “Putting a Full-Length Collection Together,” June 6, 2021 and July 26, 2021, on this blog.
Jerome Gagnon Blog 