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wimming in Lake Chauggogagogman-
chauggagogchabunagungamaugg” meant a lot to Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006).
“When I was a boy in Massachusetts one of my favorite haunts was Lake Web-
ster.” He ’d made “a thrilling discovery” in the public library: “Indians who once
lived on the shores of Lake Webster had a word of their own for it,”
Chauggogagogmanchauggagogchabunagungamaugg.Wonderfully, “this fantastic porridge of syllables” meant something: “I-fish-
on-my-side, you-fish-on-your-side, nobody-fishes-in-the-middle.” The boy
practiced uttering it. Since “the beginning of the human adventure a word” can
pack in “subterranean electric feelings.”
This thrill started a lifetime of discoveries. Late one September, for instance,
Kunitz was “chopping weeds in the field behind my house” in rural Pennsylvania.
“Toward sunset I heard a commotion in the sky and looked up, startled to observe
wedge after wedge of wild geese honking downriver, with their long necks point-
ing south. I watched until the sun sank and the air turned chill.” He went inside
with this vision and “tried until dawn to get the words down on paper.”
After five days and hundreds of lines, he saw he shouldn’t be describing the
migration—“it was the disturbance of the heart that really concerned me and
that insisted on a language.” Then with a rush of three- and four-beat lines
came “End of Summer.”
“the wild / braid of creation / trembles”
Stanley Kunitz—His Nettled Field, His Dune Garden
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