We drove up to Provincetown on a recent trip to the Cape. The place was still in a summer mood with traffic bumper to bumper on Commercial Street in the East End and tourists lining up for ice cream on MacMillan Pier. But I was there in search of something that couldn’t be discovered in any of the bustling antique shops and art galleries, something I’d been longing to find for many years.
The poet Stanley Kunitz (1905 – 2006) summered in Provincetown for nearly half a century where, over the decades, he built an extensive and apparently magnificent garden. His first collection of poems was published in 1930 and he continued to write through his very long and productive life. He was a beloved teacher and, as a judge of the Yale Younger Writers series, influenced the careers of many of our finest poets. He was a founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Poets House in New York. I was introduced to him by my late friend Carol Houck Smith who was an editor at W. W. Norton and who inherited him as an author when she was in her mid-70s and Kunitz was in his early 90s. She edited his last three books, including Passing Through, which won the National Book Award in 1995. He became the tenth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2000 when he was ninety-five years old.
Kunitz in his Provincetown garden. Photo by Marnie Crawford Samuelson
Kunitz grew frail after the publication of Passing Through and told Carol that, though he might not be able to write more poems, he would like to write a book on poetry and his garden. The Wild Braid was written in his one hundredth year. Based on a series of interviews with Kunitz, it’s a profound and deeply moving meditation on life, aging, creativity, and the kindred spirit of all living things. It also brings alive his garden in Provincetown so vividly that I feel I’ve walked along its sloping pathways many times, though it could only have been in dreams. I’d never actually been there, and now I doubt I ever will. When we finally found the address in the West End that I believed to be his, the front yard was so overgrown we could barely see the house. Though I think Kunitz would have been the first to say that the essence of every garden lies in the imagination, a place of memory and hope — its completion forever out of reach.
“There are forms of communication beyond language that have to do not only with the body, but with the spirit itself, a permeation of one’s being,” Kunitz said about writing the poem below. “I strongly identify with Henry James’ explanation for what compelled him to write, ‘The port from which I set out was, I think, that of the essential loneliness of my life….’ One of the great satisfactions of the human spirit is to feel that one’s family extends across the borders of species and belongs to everything that lives.”
The Snakes of September
by Stanley Kunitz
All summer I heard them
rustling in the shrubbery,
outracing me from tier
to tier in my garden,
a whisper among the viburnums,
a signal flashed from the hedgerow,
a shadow pulsing
in the barberry thicket.
Now that the nights are chill
and the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone,
in a torpor of blood
slipped to the nether world
before the sickle frost.
Not so. In the deceptive balm
of noon, as if defiant of the curse
that spoiled another garden,
these two appear on show
through a narrow slit
in the dense green brocade
of a north-country spruce,
dangling head-down, entwined
in a brazen love-knot.
I put out my hand and stroke
the fine, dry grit of their skins.
After all,
we are partners in this land,
co-signers of a covenant.
At my touch the wild
braid of creation
trembles.
Yes, I have also searched for that garden while visiting in Provincetown.
And the book you cite is very lovely.
He is an amazing source of inspiration.
Thank you, Suzanne. It’s comforting to know that I am not alone in looking for that garden.
All of this is wonderful!
Thank you, Cheryl!
Thank-you Liza. Really interesting to learn about Kunitz. Though not surprising, I didn’t know you had a connection to his editor.
I’ve found that sometimes when we search I something and its not what we expected or can’t find it the experience is just plain frustrating. Other times there can be something special about not finding what we searched for, maybe a melancholy sense of limitations or a reminder that the adventure was more important than the goal.
Lovely poem.
Thanks, Roger! You’re right — in this case the adventure was well worth missing the goal.
❤️❤️❤️
Always lovely to hear from you!
As usual, I love reading your posts and this one really hit home, most likely because I love my garden. and it resonated with me. Lovely poem Liza …lovely…
Thank you, Gwen!
And I find it utterly depressing and unimaginable that what what must have been such a glorious garden was allowed to deteriorate to nothing. What disregard!
Agreed.
All of this is lovely, Liza. I especially relate to the poem, those first lines,”All summer I heard them/rustling in the shrubbery .” And I caught one sunbathing near the bird feeder, but as soon as my eyes focused and I realized what I was staring at, he zipped away into the undergrowth at the edge of my property. And to your reflection—I sometimes feel the places in our minds and dreams are more real as imagined that the real thing which lacks the the emotions and life we’ve imbued those our memories with.
Beautifully put, Susan. Thank you!
Hi Susan: My site had a glitch and the post for “In Plain Sight” was lost, including the comments. I’ve restored the posting now, but would love it if you’d comment again — it’s always great to hear from you! –Liza
This poem is one of his best. But it is also how you weave it — braid it– together with your writing that hits home so hard.
Your essay reminds me of the collection of essays, Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit. She made a similar pilgrimage to find Orwell’s garden which sustained him through many difficult times. Who knew that two such different writers could have this sustaining activity– gardening, growing things, observing nature– in common? But your writing brings us all together in those pursuits.
Thank you, Patty. I’ve just ordered Solnit’s book of essays — you’ve mentioned it a few times.