Legacy of 'wise elder' Stanley Kunitz: The death of Stanley Kunitz this week marks the passing of an American poet much beloved and highly esteemed on both sides of the Atlantic. Kunitz, who twice was his country's poet laureate, was approaching his 101st birthday this coming July.
Widely regarded as a wise elder with the gift of keen poetic insight, Kunitz once offered one of the most thoughtful reflections on poetry - "Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life-enhancing and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of life." And sustaining it was for Kunitz who only last year, at the age of 100, published a greatly admired final book The Wild Braid, a collection of essays and reflections that combine his literary and gardening gifts.
Kunitz could have truly been called "the constant gardener": it was in his legendary and much cared for Provincetown (Cape Cod) garden that he received visiting poets in the last decades of his life: a botanical wonder he cultivated from its original sandy condition with the same patient attention he gave to poetry for almost three-quarters of a century.
Nearly 40 years ago, when asked why Kunitz - an infrequent publisher of his work - did not have more of a following, WH Auden responded: "Give him time. A hundred years or so. He's a patient man."
A few months before his 100th birthday last year Irish poet Michael Longley visited Kunitz in his New York home, a meeting Longley describes as "a glorious experience, a privilege and a blessing". Paying tribute to Kunitz after hearing of his death, Longley spoke of the "moral and emotional intensity shaping Stanley Kunitz's beautiful poetry."
"As well as great formal command. I believe that the finest of his passionate, devout, heartbreaking poems will prove to be immortal", he said.Honours for Kinsella The poet Thomas Kinsella - still undervalued in this country - was recently honoured by the University of Turin. An honorary degree in modern languages and literature was conferred on him for "the great moral and aesthetical value of his poetry", and for his "invaluable contribution to the preservation and diffusion of Irish cultural heritage". Following speeches on his work by professors Donatella Abbate Badin and Melita Cataldi, who have championed Kinsella's work in Italy, there was an appropriate musical contribution to the proceedings in the form of a piece from the Mass by Seán Ó Riada - a close friend of the poet - played by violinist Eilís Cranich. During the reception a volume of Italian translations of Kinsella's poetry was launched. The book was edited by professors Abbate Badin and Cataldi.
Kinsella, now in his late 70s, recently published two new books in the Peppercanister series - Marginal Economy and Readings in Poetry. Closer to home he will be guest of honour at the Force 12 literary festival in Belmullet, Co Mayo, June 9th-11th, when he will be presented with the Ted McNulty prize.
Endfestival The Beckett celebrations have come and gone - well, almost - and no doubt the cornucopia of events will have left their mark in various ways, but it took Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue to sum it up with this almost Beckettian phrase - "The festival certainly passed the time and, while it would have passed anyway, it certainly would not have passed so rapidly."
Thanking the organisers at a closing celebration in the Royal Irish Academy on Wednesday, the Minister was in perky form, pointing out,
"the sportsman in Beckett would appreciate my ranking the genius of Michael Gambon in Eh Joe, alongside the remarkable triumph of Brave Inca in the Champion Hurdle". Wondering what Beckett might have made of Bono's much-publicised verse tribute, Where's Godot? Who's Godot? at the launch of the centenary festival, the Minister thought the playwright might title his homage to the rock icon "Where the Names have no Streets".
Perhaps the Minister heard too much academic jargon recently - that's the conclusion you might come to on reading this in the supplied speech: "His mission is to guide us through the spheres of human consciousness toward a space that shelters the night. To a space where a spectrum of solitudes becomes an echo of our own voiceless thoughts. There, words find their true resonance, the confusion of opposites find harmony and the complexity of simplicity is laid bare. Beckett's task is simply to turn us away, briefly, from all the contrived voices, full of heat and fury that speak the fundamental babble of denial and distraction." Maybe too much Beckett does that to a man. O'Donoghue also welcomed the decision to name the new Liffey bridge at Macken Street after Beckett. Now, that will be a real legacy of the centenary.