Stanley's House (2007)

The story of former Poet Laureate of the United States, Stanley J. Kunitz and his boyhood home in Worcester, Massachusetts. 'Stanley's House' focuses on the Pulitzer Prize winner's Worcester poems and the three-decker house where he lived as a teenager. This is the same house where the filmmaker, Tobe Carey, grew up some twenty years later. In May 2006, Carey filmed Stanley Kunitz in his New York City apartment where the poet read four Worcester poems and referring to the stucco house where he was raised, remarked, "That house still has a hold on both of us." Four days later, Stanley Kunitz died at 100 years of age. Kunitz was born in 1905, two months after his father committed suicide in a Worcester public park. Many of his most poignant poems deal with the search for his 'lost' father and growing in on Worcester's then largely Jewish East Side. 'Stanley's House' interweaves the Kunitz family history and that of the filmmaker, as well as material about the restoration of the house by the current owners, Greg and Carol Stockmal.