Stanley Kunitz and the testing-tree
When the poet Stanly Kunitz was a boy, he spent a great deal of time in the woods where he invented a game around a favorite oak tree. The object of the game was to throw three rocks at the oak. Hitting the oak with one stone meant that someone would love him, hitting with two stones meant that he would be a poet, and hitting with all three stones meant that he would never die. His poem "The Testing-Tree" remembers that experience and suggests that it is "necessary to go through dark and deeper dark" to continue the search for that tree and the stones that one must cast.
I've borrowed the Kunitz image of the testing tree for the name of this blog. It seems to me to be a seminal image for the education of a poet. In a sense, all of the best poetry written in the past becomes a kind of testing tree for the new poet. He or she must constantly work to understand the tradition, the legacy, all that has been done before. That tradition is the tree against which each new poet must toss his or her own stones.
posted by Stonethrower @ 7:40 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I think that the "Testing Tree" story offers much to ponder. I agree that the new poet benefits from being aware of past poetry -- both American (as specified in the quote at the top of this blog) and non-American. I wonder, though, whether it is necessary for the new poet to be aware of "the best only" (which may be an elitist decision), or if it is necessary instead to be aware of "the wider good" (which may be a popular opinion). I once read a useful distinction between the words literay "tradition" (kept alive by popular folk culture, and inclusive) and the literary "canon" (kept recorded by historians, and exclusive). Also, I offer this observation -- all "new" poetry was once, at the moment of its introduction, considered to be "not poetry" (that is, the newest poetry always breaks completely with the tradition or canon).
Gwen
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