Introducing twenty new poems and bringing together works from previous volumes, this collection of 150 poems, arranged in reverse chronological order, represents a half century of work by the distinguished contemporary poet

"A graceful and moving glimpse into a rare and giving artist's refined poetics, garden aesthetics, and spirituality."— Booklist Throughout his life (1905-2006) Stanley Kunitz created poetry and tended gardens. This book is the distillation of conversations, none previously published, that took place between 2002 and 2004. Beginning with the garden, that "work of the imagination," the explorations journey through personal recollections, the creative process, and the harmony of the life cycle. A bouquet of poems and a total of 26 full-color photographs accompany the various sections. The Wild Braid received a 2006 American Horticultural Society Book Award.

Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz will be kept close at hand by young poets as a survival kit. Others who care about poetry and the life of the imagination will read and re-read the book to clear the head. Readers will understand why Kunitz is seen by many as a paradigm of the creative artist, a model and example to whom any artist - poet, painter, or whatever - can go for aid and courage.

Stanley Kunitz has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize for "Selected Poems 1928-1958," the Brandeis Medal of Achievement, the Harriet Monroe Award, and "Poetry's" Levinson Prize. He is editor of the "Yale Series of Younger Poets" and of "Twentieth Century Authors," and is known for his teaching of poetry at such institutions as Columbia, the New School, Yale, Brandeis, and Bennington.