SOURCE: “The Poems of Stanley Kunitz Confront ‘The Great Simplicities,’” in Chicago Tribune Books, December 31, 1995, p. 4.

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

Yes, lately we've been intrigued by a poetry infused with the postmodern, by its skeptical deconstructions and complexities. But how it refreshes and affirms to reconnect with a voice, an aesthetic, that risks caring.

“What is there left to confront but the great simplicities? I never tire of birdsong and sky and weather. … I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world,” states Stanley Kunitz in the opening comments to his Passing Through: Later Poems, New and Selected.

Winner of this year's National Book Award, Passing Through is Kunitz's ninth collection and coincides with the celebration of his 90th birthday. Leave the metadiscourse to some other generation, Kunitz is “in league with that...