SOURCE: A review of Poems of Stanley Kunitz: 1928–1978, in American Poetry Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, July/August, 1980, pp. 36–41.

Orr explores what he identifies as Kunitz's major theme: the son's quest for the father.

If Stanley Kunitz is a major poet, then he must have a major theme. What is that theme? Something that for the moment I'll call "the son's quest for the father." As all authentic major themes of this century must, it represents a fusion of personal crisis with an impersonal, universal significance. For the process of fusing personal and impersonal, the phrase Kunitz uses in relation to his own work is "to convert life into legend." I would assert that there must be a certain balance between the personal and impersonal in such an endeavor. In terms of the father-quest theme, Kunitz's early work (Selected Poems) is weighted toward the impersonal, and it is only in...