SOURCE: "The Thirty Years' War," in Poetry, Vol. 93, No. 3, December, 1958, pp. 174-78.

In the following essay, Wagoner predicts that the publication of Selected Poems, 1928-1958 will bring an end to critical neglect of Kunitz's poetry.

One of the most depressing literary curiosities of the past three decades has been the neglect of Stanley Kunitz's poetry. His earlier books—Intellectual Things (1930) and Passport to the War (1944)—received uniformly high praise from reviewers (for the single exception, see his poem "A Choice of Weapons," but serious critical attention appeared to stop there. Now, at last, the Selected Poems 1928-1958 marks what will surely be the end of Kunitz's quiet Thirty Years' War for a place among the very best poets of our time. Let us hope that the Peace of Westphalia will be celebrated in anthologies and perhaps even on the most important prize lists.

The eighty-five poems in the...