SOURCE: "Man with a Leaf in His Head," in Nation, Vol. 213, No. 8, September 20, 1971, pp. 250-51.

Praising the artistry and maturity of The Testing-Tree, Moss considers some of Kunitz's major themes, including the opposition of life and death, the search for the unknown father, religion, and nature.

In his Selected Poems, published in 1958, Stanley Kunitz gave us some dozen poems that are likely to guide people guided by poetry, as long as English is read. He has "suffered the twentieth century," confronted tragic experience, given it form—in the course of the poems, triumphed over it. Now we have thirty additional poems. I have spent a month with The Testing-Tree in my pocket or within reach, blessed and tortured by its artistry. The new book brings a new open style; complications have been made apparently simple. When passionless, open simplicity is the crab grass of our literature, Kunitz's poems...