SOURCE: “Life between Scylla and Charybdis,” in Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz, edited by Stanley Moss, Sheep Meadow Press, 1993, pp. 128–36.

In the following essay, Ryan offers an analysis of Kunitz's poem “My Sisters” and discusses Kunitz's views on the social, moral, and personal significance of poetry.

The life of a poet is crystallized in his work, that's how you know him.

—Stanley Kunitz

This is one of the poems by Stanley Kunitz I love the most:

“my Sisters”

Who whispered, souls have shapes? So has the wind, I say. But I don't know, I only feel things blow. 

I had two sisters once with long black hair who walked apart from me and wrote the history of tears. Their story's faded with their names, but the candlelight they carried, like dancers in a dream, still flickers on their gowns as they bend over me to comfort my...