The Portrait by Stanley Kunitz

The Portrait

by Stanley Kunitz

My mother never forgave my father

for killing himself,

especially at such an awkward time

and in a public park,

that spring

when I was waiting to be born.

She locked his name

in her deepest cabinet

and would not let him out,

though I could hear him thumping.

When I came down from the attic

with the pastel portrait in my hand

of a long-lipped stranger

with a brave moustache

and deep brown level eyes,

she ripped it into shreds

without a single word

and slapped me hard.

In my sixty-fourth year

I can feel my cheek

still burning.

This poem is in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove (Penguin, 2011). I love poetry anthologies for many reasons: their variety, how they introduce poets and/or poems previously unknown, how poems in them end up in a context not originally meant, how I agree and disagree with the editor (why that poem? love this poem! why is this poet in here? why is this other poet not in here? so happy to see that poet in here!), and how they remind me of poems and poets I read long ago and have not returned to in a while. Such is the case with this poem.

Stanley Kunitz grew up and spent his early adult life in Worcester, Massachusetts, where my father is from. Connection over. Kunitz's parents were Lithuanian Jews. His father, a dressmaker, did in fact kill himself, as happens in the poem. After going bankrupt, Solomon Kunitz ingested carbolic acid and died in a public park, which is also in the poem.

I love this poem for his unrelenting heartache, beginning with the first line which gives us no hint as to what is to come as far as content, but sets the poem's tone.

Then there is this powerful image:

She locked his name

in her deepest cabinet

and would not let him out,

though I could hear him thumping.

The mother reacted to her husband's suicide by acting as though he never existed; Kunitz's mother, apparently, rid the house the house of everything connected with her late husband. The speaker, looking back at his childhood, admits to being haunted metaphorically by this hole in his own history. Perfectly understandable.

The next 8 lines have a short narrative: the speaker finds a portrait of his father in the attic and his mother's reaction is a violent one. She tears up the piece and slaps the boy.

The last 3 lines tell us the impact of this act--decades later, he still feels the slap.

This pivotal moments in childhood affect us all, even if--to the adults involved--they are not that memorable. Kunitz captures this trauma and deftly expresses it here, making this poem as unforgettable as the act was to him.

Stanley Kunitz won the Pulitzer for his Selected Poems: 1928-1958 and was the U.S. Poet Laureate twice. He died at the age of 100 in 2006. The Poetry Foundation has a wonderful remembrance of him by the poet Gregory Orr; you can read it here. You can read more of his poetry and more about him on the same site here.

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is here.