I have carried some of [Stanley Kunitz's poems] in my head for twenty years, and they still ring there in delight. Listen to the opening lines of "Deciduous Branch":

        Winter, that coils in the thickets now,
        Will glide from the fields; the swinging rain
        Be knotted with flowers; on every bough
        A bird will meditate again.

How sweetly the usual word slips fresh into the line—coils, glide, swinging, knotted, meditate—and how sweetly the rhythm sways the thought alive! Such lines are not only in the purest lyric tradition of English poetry, but do honor to that tradition. To be sure, Kunitz is not always that immediately clear. He is a poet of intellectual passions. At times one must labor to follow the subtleties of his perception. The point is that the labor will not be in vain. Kunitz is certainly the most neglected good poet of...