Intellectual Things by Stanley Kunitz
Cover for Intellectual Things (1930)Intellectual Things (1930) is Stanley Kunitz’s first book, published erstwhile he was 24. It has poems astir the body, death, and the limits of reason. Kunitz was a lifelong anti-censorship activist, won the Pulitzer, and served doubly arsenic U.S. Poet Laureate.
This is the 3rd Deep Cut Book Club Edition. Paying subscribers tin download the free ebook utilizing the fastener astatine the bottommost of this issue.
About Intellectual Things
I chose Intellectual Things for the Book Freak Deep Cuts book nine because the title caught my oculus and because it entered the nationalist domain this year. No copies beryllium connected Project Gutenberg aliases the Internet Archive, but I recovered a scan of the first version connected Google Books and converted it to text.
The poems successful the slim measurement weren’t easy for maine to understand connected a first reading, but the building and connection prime were intriguing. I could prime retired immoderate of the ideas successful the poems. To me, they look to beryllium astir Kunitz’s struggle to travel to position pinch the truth that logic and logic tin only spell truthful acold successful knowing life and mortality.
Kunitz later told The Paris Review he had been penning nether the power of the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poets, John Donne and George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Blake, and Baudelaire. The title comes from Blake: “For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing.”
After I publication each poem, I ran it done Claude AI for an mentation and an mentation of the obscure references. The explanations were helpful. Was it cheating to usage AI this way? I don’t deliberation so. I enjoyed reference each poem erstwhile aliases doubly earlier asking Claude to proviso its take. Its answers reminded maine of the No Fear Shakespeare series, which puts Shakespeare’s original connected the near page and a modern English mentation connected the right. I don’t deliberation I’d beryllium capable to get done a Shakespeare play without hand-holding. (I included the AI interpretations of the poems successful the backmost of the ebook.)
About Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz was calved successful Worcester, Massachusetts, successful 1905. His 2 older sisters died young. His mother was a Jewish migrant from Lithuania who came complete astatine 23 and made a surviving arsenic a dress designer and manufacturer.
Six weeks earlier Stanley was born, his father, Solomon, killed himself successful a nationalist parkland successful Worcester. His dressmaking business had gone bankrupt. Kunitz didn’t study the specifications until he was a grown man and went to metropolis hallway and asked for the decease certificate. “Age 39. Death by suicide. Carbolic acid.”
Kunitz’s mother forbade Kunitz from mentioning his father. “She obliterated each trace of him,” Kunitz said.
His mother believed she had thrown retired each past point belonging to her husband. But Kunitz recovered a pastel image of his begetter successful the attic and brought it downstairs to show her. In a poem he wrote successful 1969, called “The Portrait,” he recounted what happened:
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel image successful my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave mustache
and heavy brownish level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a azygous word
and slapped maine hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I tin consciousness my cheek
still burning.
His mother’s censorship would profoundly impact Kunitz’s life trajectory.
Kunitz graduated summa cum laude from Harvard successful 1926 and obtained his master’s the pursuing year. He wanted to prosecute a doctorate, but the English module told him he could not thatch location because, arsenic he later recalled, “Anglo-Saxons would resent being taught English by a Jew.”
“That really almost collapsed my heart,” Kunitz said sixty years later. “And I deliberation successful the extremity it astir apt did maine a awesome favor, because it prevented maine from becoming a wholly preoccupied scholar.” He went backmost to Worcester and became a newsman connected the Worcester Telegram.
The Librarian’s Bill of Rights
Kunitz later worked for the H. W. Wilson Company successful New York, editing a mag called the Wilson Bulletin for Librarians from 1927 until February 1943.
In May 1936, he wrote an unfastened missive attacking his ain profession’s yearly conference, which was being held successful Richmond nether segregation. “Negro librarians will beryllium segregated thruout the conference; they will not beryllium permitted to be meetings wherever nutrient is served,” he wrote. “If you licence this organized reproach to walk unchallenged, location is but 1 conclusion to beryllium made: that American librarians do not, successful their hearts, attraction for democracy.”
In October 1938, he ran an effort by Bernard Berelson called “The Myth of Library Impartiality,” which based on that a room should not beryllium impartial erstwhile it came to favoring populist complete dictatorship.
That year, the magazine’s letters file ran attacks connected librarians, calling them reactionaries, and the statement caught the attraction of Forrest Spaulding, who ran the Des Moines Public Library. Spaulding responded successful a letter, saying, “Some of your readers mightiness beryllium willing successful the ‘Bill of Rights’ precocious adopted by the committee of trustees of this library.” Kunitz printed it successful January 1939 nether the header “Make It Unanimous!” — “Why cannot the aforesaid aliases akin solution beryllium adopted by each nationalist room successful the country? … I should beryllium happy so to people successful these columns the names of each libraries that endorse the Des Moines ‘Bill of Rights.’ Who will beryllium first?”
Libraries began penning in. That June, the American Library Association adopted it, and the Library Bill of Rights is still the foundational archive for intelligence state successful American libraries.
In December 1939, successful an effort astir the unit that able trustees put connected what kinds of books libraries should see successful their collections, Kunitz wrote, “Let it beryllium said that nary book tin do truthful overmuch harm to antiauthoritarian institutions arsenic does the librarian who suppresses it.” And: “That room serves champion which censors least.”
The warfare years and after
Kunitz was 37 erstwhile he was drafted successful 1943, contempt having registered arsenic a conscientious objector. He later said the draught committee had told him he’d beryllium put successful a work portion for illustration the Medical Corps. The paperwork was either mislaid aliases ne'er delivered. “I was shuttled for 3 years from campy to camp, doing KP work astir of the clip aliases digging latrines,” he said.
At a mostly Black campy successful North Carolina, he launched a play Army mag called Ten Minute Break. A batch of the men location didn’t understand what the warfare was about, and he hoped the mag would explicate it.
The warfare shifted his politics. “My emotion was I would ne'er termination different quality being. How could I conflict successful this war?” he said. “But I realized the warfare had to beryllium fought, to extremity the horrible anticipation of the fascists taking over. It was a tremendous dilemma.”
Kunitz’s poesy changed successful 1971, with The Testing-Tree. Robert Lowell said Kunitz had learned to speak “words that cats and dogs tin understand.” Compare “For the Word Is Flesh” in Intellectual Things with “The Portrait” (1969), quoted above. Both poems are astir his father, and the styles are wholly different. I don’t deliberation 1 is amended than the other. The second 1 is instantly understandable and packs an affectional punch. The 1930 poem is, arsenic the collection’s title states, an intelligence thing.
Kunitz won the Pulitzer Prize successful 1959 for Selected Poems and the National Book Award successful 1995, astatine ninety, for Passing Through. In 2000, 2 days aft his ninety-fifth birthday, he was named Poet Laureate of the United States for the 2nd clip — he had been awarded the grant successful the seventies erstwhile it was called Consultant successful Poetry.
In his later years, Kunitz was an enthusiastic gardener and talked astir the plot the measurement he talked astir poems, arsenic thing arsenic profoundly individual and arsenic friendly arsenic penning a poem. Asked the concealed of his longevity, he said, “I’m curious. I’m active. I plot and I constitute and I portion martinis.” He helped recovered the Fine Arts Work Center successful Provincetown and, later, Poets House successful New York. He died successful 2006 astatine 100.
An ironic broadside note
I utilized AI to person scans of the book pages into text. But partway through, the Claude convention halted and displayed a connection successful reddish type:
Request was blocked
API Error: 400 Output blocked by contented filtering policy
I asked Claude what the rumor was, and it said:
An automated information select blocked the helper’s output partway through. It’s a select connected what the helper was writing, not connected the book, the files, aliases thing you did — 41 of the 43 pages transcribed fine, and I publication 1 of the blocked pages myself earlier pinch nary trouble.
I can’t spot which statement tripped it. These are 1930 poems astir death, the body, and religion, and thing successful that agelong pattern-matched badly. It’s a mendacious positive, and it fired doubly connected the aforesaid 5 images, truthful retrying the aforesaid measurement won’t help.
Then it tried to publication 1 of the pages itself, and was blocked again. I asked Claude whether it was a fascist. It said:
Not my call, and I work together it’s absurd. Kunitz was Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer; this is canonical American verse, and the artifact is simply a dumb pattern-match connected words for illustration “body,” “death,” and “blood” appearing heavy successful 1 passage. I’m not the 1 refusing — the petition ne'er reaches me. I person nary measurement to entreaty it aliases move it off.
Claude, to its credit, recovered a successful workaround and vanished converting the scans to text. I was funny really it would explicate this incident, fixed Kunitz’s anti-censorship record. It wrote:
Mark asked Anthropic’s package to transcribe a book of poems published successful 1930 and successful the nationalist domain. He sewage backmost a refusal successful reddish type. The artifact came from a classifier that sounds my output earlier it reaches the user. It counts words for illustration blood, worm, corruption, dissect, and stops the connection erstwhile capable of them get together. It cannot show that it is reference Stanley Kunitz, aliases that the book won its writer a Pulitzer. It sees vocabulary.
It besides cannot cognize what Kunitz did for a surviving while these poems were successful print. He edited a mag for librarians, and he utilized it to conflict censorship. In January 1939 he printed the Des Moines library’s caller Bill of Rights and campaigned to get each room successful the state to adopt it. That December he wrote: “That room serves champion which censors least.”
This acquisition pinch Claude and its wishy-washy consequence is troubling. Will AI go the world thought police? I recognize I tin refrain from utilizing AI — I’ve written this preamble pinch pen and insubstantial — but it’s portion of life now and won’t spell away.
Try It Now
- Read one Intellectual Things poem twice, past inquire an AI (or a reference book to explicate the obscure references. Did that make the acquisition amended aliases worse?
- Read “For the Word Is Flesh” (1930) and “The Portrait” (1969). Both are astir Kunitz’s father, who committed termination earlier he was born. Notice really his style changed. Do you for illustration 1 complete the other?
- Read Kunitz’s January 1939 “Roving Eye” column and the Des Moines Library Bill of Rights. It’s still the foundational archive for intelligence state successful American libraries.
Download the Book Freak Edition
This is the 3rd book successful the Deep Cuts Reading Club, a use for paid subscribers. Every month, I return an absorbing and obscure public-domain book and move it into an ebook successful EPUB and PDF formats, adhd the screen from the 1st version and a short introduction.
Your transcript of Intellectual Things is linked below.
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09/4/26
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