May the Goddess Guard Him. May He Find His Way To The Summerlands. May His Friends And Family Know Peace

Former poet laureate Stanley Kunitz died at 100, asleep in his bed. The AP reports that, "In some ways, he maintained a quiet, contemplative life, working for hours at night on an old manual typewriter, and by day nurturing his beloved garden in Provincetown, Mass. But he also helped found two writing centers and was a self-described pacifist who was a conscientious objector in World War II, opposed the Vietnam War and criticized the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

'He was very outgoing, very cheerful, very funny, very interested in you and the others in the room,' said fellow poet Galway Kinnell. 'You could say that most of the American poets younger than he was tended to look up to him as their guide, their leader, their surrogate father.

'Of course,' Kinnell added with a laugh, 'after a while, all the poets were younger poets.'

Shortly before his 100th birthday, "The Wild Braid" was published, featuring poems, photographs of Kunitz in his garden and his reflections on gardening, art and the end of life. 'Death is absolutely essential for the survival of life itself on the planet,' he said, explaining his acceptance of mortality. 'It would become full of old wrecks, dominating the population.'"


He loved two of the things that I love: poetry and gardening. Here's one of my favorite poems of his:

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.

Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.

He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.


From The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine, W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.

You know, if you can spend a hundred years writing amazing poems and gardening, die in your sleep, and have Galway Kinnell eulogize you -- well, I think that's about as good as it gets.