Stanley Kunitz

"The poem in the head is always perfect.  Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language."

— Stanley Kunitz

American Poet

1905 - 2006

This statement by Stanley Kunitz sums up one of the key challenges that every creative leader faces.  What we create in the physical world never is as good as what we imagine in our minds.  Most artists, writers and performers are never satisfied with the end product because we see something different in our mind's eye.  And we have to learn to accept that it is okay to be imperfect.  Perfection is unachievable.  In fact, as humans what makes us interesting is our flaws.  And the same thing is true of our art.  It is the mistakes that make our art unique.  If the work we created was perfect, then every piece of art would look the same.  It is our flaws and weaknesses that make our art uniquely ours.  Our imperfections help make the art perfect.

Here is a poem by Stanley Kunitz.



Passing Through



By Stanley Kunitz



     -- on my seventy-ninth birthday



Nobody in the widow's household

ever celebrated anniversaries.

In the secrecy of my room

I would not admit I cared

that my friends were given parties.

Before I left town for school

my birthday went up in smoke

in a fire at City Hall that gutted

the Department of Vital Statistics.

If it weren't for a census report

of a five-year-old White Male

sharing my mother's address

at the Green Street tenement in Worcester

I'd have no documentary proof

that I exist.  You are the first,

my dear, to bully me

into these festive occasions.



Sometimes, you say, I wear

an abstracted look that drives you

up the wall, as though it signified

distress or disaffection.

Don't take it so to heart.

Maybe I enjoy not-being as much

as being who I am.  Maybe

it's time for me to practice

growing old.  The way I look

at it, I'm passing through a phase:

gradually I'm changing to a word.

Whatever you choose to claim

of me is always yours;

nothing is truly mine

except my name.  I only

borrowed this dust.

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