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A poem about the poet's journey through life and death, and the layers of experience and wisdom that shape his identity. Read the full text, analysis, and context of this classic poem by Stanley Kunitz.
A poem about the poet's journey through life and death, and the layers of experience and wisdom that shape his identity. Read the full text, annotations, and context of this classic poem by Stanley Kunitz, a Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate.
- Summary of The Layers
- Structure of The Layers
- Literary Devices in The Layers
- Analysis of The Layers
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The speaker depicts his life through a series of powerful images. These images display for the reader a life that’s been filled with change and transformation. The speaker has been many people and lived different lives. Now, as he looks back on his past, he sees a wasteland. He struggles to overcome it, but in the middle of the poem, he makes a tra...
‘The Layers’ by Stanley Kunitz is a forty-four line poem that is contained within a single stanza. The poem is written without a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. This is a technique known as free verse. The lines are all fairly short and often flow into one another using a technique known as enjambment.
Kunitz makes use of several literary devices in ‘The Layers’. These include alliteration, metaphor, and enjambment. The latter, enjambment, occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sent...
Lines 1-14
In the first lines of ‘The Layers,’ the speaker begins by telling the intended listener, whoever they may be, that he has “walked through many lives” and some of them have even been his own. This is an elegant and interesting way of describing the different ways this speaker has experienced the world. He has taken on different personalities, belief systems, and patterns, as we all do, throughout his life. Some of these even felt like they originated within his own mind or soul. The others wer...
Lines 15-31
In the next section of ‘The Layers’ the speaker describes how over top of his past—the fires and miles stones— there are “scavenger angels” they “wheel” or fly around sharply on “heavy wings”. These peaceful and beautiful implications of the word “angel” are juxtaposedagainst the word “scavenger”. They are as much like vultures as they are guardians. The speaker’s emotions start to come through the next lines. His memories are powerful and he worries over what he cannot change. He remembers t...
Lines 32-44
In the final lines of ‘The Layers,’ the speaker recalls a moving and likely metaphorical memory from the past. There were times in the “darkest night” when he would be roaming through the wreckage of his personal history that he’d hear a god-like voice. Kunitz describes it as “nimbus-clouded” as though its coming down from the heavens through the layer of clouds. The voice tells him to “Live in the layers / not on the litter”. He should take strength from the layers of his own life, the exper...
Learn about the meaning and structure of 'The Layers', a free verse poem by the 10th poet laureate of the United States. Explore the speaker's journey of acceptance and growth through life's changes and the use of metaphor, alliteration, and enjambment.
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
Published in The Poems of Stanley Kunitz (1978) when the poet was 73, "The Layers" deals with themes of aging, change, and loss. Its speaker, who is old enough to have "walked through many lives" (or at least feel like he has), contemplates the milestones he's passed and the friends he's outlived.
Oct 1, 2023 · "The Layers" is a single-stanza, free-verse poem of 44 lines that focuses on change, loss and human will. It contains strong imagery and metaphor and has a contemplative tone. In some respects, it is a religious poem; the language has biblical echoes in certain lines as part of the speaker's search for personal identity through higher influences.
Read the full text of the poem "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who explored themes of life, death, and transformation. Learn about the poet's biography, style, and sources.
Unlike Kunitz's other works that often focus on loss and mortality, "The Layers" emphasizes the transformative nature of life, with each phase providing lessons and shaping the speaker's identity. This poem is a testament to the human spirit's ability to endure and find meaning amidst life's complexities.
