Barry Spacks

Visiting Stanley Kunitz


The September 1st 2003 issue of the New Yorker

had an article in there about the poet Stanley Kunitz

but it finished without a single word as to how Stanley

was so nice and encouraging to me.

I'd written him a fan note, wowed by his translations from Akhmatova,

and he wrote back saying hey, come visit in Provincetown.

When I got there he was working in his famous garden.

We both paused to smell the roses.

His then wife, a blondie, much younger, you could see

how proud Kunitz was of her, giving off that kind of smirk

of the well-fixed poet, because all that matters to poets (face it)

is sexual vibrancy, providing the honey-vinegar in their poems.

This wife, whose name I'm sorry to say I do not remember,

painted paintings on glass, on large sheets of glass.

Stanley and I talked po'biz; then we talked poetry,

agreed that the avant-garde's presumption

in besmirching true poets with the dowdy label "mainstream"

should send the perpetrators directly back to the end of the line.

We puzzled a bit over the need (of male poets, anyway)

to desire to undress every sweetie in sight,

concluding that the energy involved in making anything new

was like the sperm's feeling as it comes around the bend into the homestretch.

We shared tea and cookies and a certain amount of learned reference

(none of which -- oddly -- turns up in that New Yorker essay)

while I appreciated the stirring painter-muse of aging Kunitz,

she with her art you could see through like a transparent dress. 

***

My Scientist

Each poet is teamed with a scientist,

mine the newly married Sadie Ryan Simonovich

who works mainly in "human-wildlife disease interface

with special concern for the way

primates infect one another."

She speaks Elephant, Chimp, Cape Buffalo,

not to mention Afrikaans and such.

Mostly Sadie likes to count, to fill spreadsheets,

to sample populations, invent software, oh

scientists do like to count, while we slovenly

poets need wild elixir for our work,

want something whacky, unaccountable

to mix in there, something not quite sane

(this in order to court, best we can, the depths).

Along these lines, Einstein once wrote

"the most beautiful and deepest experience." 

underlying the principle of religion, was

"serious endeavor in art and science"

and "the mysterious," so the poets

get to seem whacky, even childlike,

this causing many of the scientists

to smile or chide. For their part, the scientists

natter on in a language drained

so very dry that poets rush in

with flagons of wine -- Here, drink, drink,

dance in the streets, dear Scientists.

"Not now," says Sadie the Scientist.

"I must count,

"but perhaps later, after work

when you talk about me in a poem?

as I dearly hope you will,

O, you so smitten,

smug with your careless carefreeness."

The Poet pauses with a wry smile at this.

He sighs: "Oh, my Scientist!"

***  

Yom Kippur

For child-years I pronounced it "young kipper,"

"kipper" a fish, "win one for The Kipper."

Solemn the music, Kol Nidre, allowing

the wicked to share in the penitence.

We wicked kids knew the call to atone,

but really the day seemed an "At-one-ment"

with God the sin-checker, neglected guest,

looking on. I loved the Yom Kippur joke:

"No ticket? Okay, go talk to your uncle,

but don't let me catch you dovening."

After the long day of prayer, ah, the fine harsh

wavering ram's horn croon: Go eat!

We raced home to glory: the fast-breaking meal,

burst in crying: "Shofer bloozen!"

Nothing could ever go wrong after that:

contrition, and then: holy chicken soup.

*** 

Why?

"Why?" There's a question.

Why this cancer of the spleen,

this palmetto branch where the white moths hover...

why these particular clangs and scrapes 

from the brutally dumped-out recycling collector? 

And why this romance between Tim and Brenda

Why of all the Brendas Tim might have chosen,

this particular Brenda, and why, to get down to it, 

why Pope Joan, 

or the Albigensian Crusade?

Why must a dawn song be called an "Alba"

in Spain and instead an "Aubade" in France 

when there's only just a few miles between, 

and what can anyone do about that?

And what is poor Tim ever going to do

when the pressure within builds up to a point

that wants him to get so far into Brenda

he'll reach for the chocolates and reds lying hidden

beneath her whiteness? Just asking. 

Brenda has put up with a hell of a lot

during her 23 years on earth.

She's hoping she and Tim could have, like, 

conversations, like in the movies, 

pert and sassy: he'd do Hugh Grant

and she'd reply in ecstasy,

overwhelmed, as in wandering

the aisles at Sur La Table, all these

Espresso Machines!

ceramic roosters!

little medallions for placing around

the necks of wine bottles, this to tell them

"You're white," "You're red,"

plus those gizmos for measuring 

portions of pasta, all depending

on how many guests may drop in that night.

***  

This Dreamy Place the World

To paint no more than her lips

      I studied waves,

how clouds hover

              lover-like

      above the mountains

         offering shade, reviving rain,

                   brutal snow.

                         *

 I kept flirting with this girl, she wore

            "genius lipstick,"

     from my youthful, hard-wood view

                it seemed the only thing she wore.

                            *

     Walking through campus puddles, 

students with big umbrellas; 

       others, with smiles, 

                  playing wetly at home. 

                            *

          After the grey, the blue.

    We're free to imagine anything

            if only for freedom's sake:

              like clouds raining upward.

                            *

       well, each feature of this

         dreamy place the world

         is equally, madly, unlikely:

              willows, baseball, hate, 

 cloud-drops on the windowpanes 

             that slide sideways

     like clear tadpoles

            (becoming invisible frogs)

and still it rains...

                   that "it,"

                           that madly inscrutable "it."

***
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