Stanley's House2007

The late Stanley Kunitz, Poet Laureate of the United States in 2000, wrote many poems about growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the house in which he lived as a child. Some of the Pulitzer Prize winner's most memorable poetry illuminates his family, the search for his father who committed suicide six-weeks before he was born, his house, the neighborhood and his sense of place in Worcester. The 1918 classic Worcester three-decker house in which he lived now bears a plaque proclaiming the site's importance in Stanley's Kunitz's life while growing up.



My name is Tobe Carey. I'm a filmmaker, and I grew up in this same house some thirty years after Stanley. From the 2nd grade on I lived there until going to college in 1960. Up until a few years ago I knew nothing about Stanley Kunitz's poetry or the Kunitz's family history. Only then did I discover the connection with childhoods spend in and around our house.



In 2006, when I videotaped Stanley Kunitz in his New York City apartment, he read four Worcester poems and then off-camera he remarked, "That house still has a hold on both of us." Stanley Kunitz was 100 years old when he died four days later on Mother's Day, 2006.