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Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz was born on July 29, 1905, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the only son and youngest of three children of a Russian Sephardic Jewish father, Solomon Kunitz, a dressmaker, and a Lithuanian mother,

Against Destruction

by Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006)

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 Beside the throbbing beasts, the strong machines, 
 That crouch, tight-muscled, in the angry dark, 
 A file of mannikins now lifts, now beams, 
 Forgetful of the sun, the field, the lark. 
 Man serves his own inventions, that transform 
 Him to themselves: this lathe, this gyroscope, 
 Was sinuous of body as the worm 
 And had the grace of deer and antelope. 
 A heavy soot is falling in the air 

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Poets Book of Days

July 29

Stanley Kunitz born, 1905

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

What famous American poet did Ernest Hemingway get into a fist fight with?

Answer

Wallace Stevens. The scuffle occurred in the Florida Keys in 1936, and it's hard to know what it was about other than both were drunk. Hemingway boasted in a letter that he: "knocked all of him down several times and gave him a good beating." He was 36 and Stevens was 56.

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