SOURCE: “Survivors' Stories,” in New Leader, October 9–23, 1995, pp. 14–15.

In the following review, Pettingell offers a positive assessment of Passing Through.

Stanley Kunitz has proved to be the survivor of his generation of poets. Born the same decade as Langston Hughes, Theodore Roethke, W. H. Auden, and Robert Penn Warren, Kunitz continues, at 90, to flourish as a writer. To mark his latest chronological milestone, Norton has published his ninth collection of verse, Passing Through: Later Poems, New and Selected. The book brims with the enthusiasm and energy we have come to expect from its author. True, Kunitz’ themes can be dark. He views many subjects with irony, sometimes outright skepticism, occasionally outrage. What most impresses itself on the reader, however, is his imagination: perpetually curious, eager for fresh revelation. In “The Round,” he confesses, “I can scarcely wait for tomorrow when a new life begins for me, / as it...