“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz, read by Stanley Kunitz–afterward by Sher Schwartz

June 27, 2025

“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz, read by Stanley Kunitz–afterward by Sher Schwartz

Click the link below to read Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54897/the-layers

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Stanley Kunitz

Posted by:

Sher Schwartz

http://sherpoetry.wordpress.com/

6 responses to ““The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz, read by Stanley Kunitz–afterward by Sher Schwartz”

Anonymous

June 27, 2025 at 9:35 am

“Live in the layers not on the litter.”
I love this. To me this offers— be open to the possibilities of the greater All. Do not get stuck focusing on the negative or judging.
“… no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. “

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1. Sher Schwartz
  
  June 27, 2025 at 7:13 pm
  
  Thanks for sharing your reflections. I love how wide and broad you responded to this poem. Offers a view I had not considered. Thanks again….
  
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Gigi Murphy

June 27, 2025 at 9:57 am

this existential soliloquy is timely for me and all other elder human beings. it moved through my blood to my heart and hands. a song of lament and hope. a warning and encouragement. thank you stanley. thank you sher. this is the good side of humanness.

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1. Sher Schwartz
  
  June 27, 2025 at 7:11 pm
  
  I’m so glad you got a chance to listen to this poem. I thought of you when recording the clip! I agree it is uplifting even if elegiac in other tones. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
  
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tlapera5411

July 2, 2025 at 9:00 am

As I age, it’s hard not to take account on a more frequent basis of the losses – losses of people yes, but also what feel like losses as new chapters unfold. Children growing up and moving on, careers changing and ending. As an older person there are two phrases that resonate so strongly with me : How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses and every stone on the road precious to me. If we do not view the losses as something of a feast (to experience loss, after all, it means we have enjoyed something that is now lost), and if the stones on the road are not precious – then it is all just loss and that is unbearable.

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1. Sher Schwartz
  
  July 2, 2025 at 9:03 am
  
  This is so beautifully expressed. An older man contacted me privately with very similar thoughts and feelings. Our aging gives us such perspective (let’s hope), and this is a blessing. Thanks for listening and commenting.
  
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About Me

“I’m a retired Humanities professor, published essayist, poet, painter, singer, and old-time fiddle musician living on an historic two-hundred-acre farm in Eastern Oregon. I plant gardens for pollinators and revel in insects, bird dogs, donkeys, goats, cats, and American fantail and roller pigeons. My lyric landscapes are oak savannah, prairie, and riparian. Writing poetry gives me a way to express and question the rhythms I hear. My chapbook The Beautiful One’s Ark (2024) is available through The Poetry Box and online bookstores. Sher Poetry celebrates poetry as an oral language art. Each week I’ll share a poem from some of my work or from that of other poets who I love to hear.