Stanley Kunitz | |
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| Born | Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (1905-07-28)July 28, 1905 Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | May 14, 2006(2006-05-14) (aged 100) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Education | Harvard University (BA,MA) |
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Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (/ˈkjuːnɪts/; July 28, 1905 – May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointedPoet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.[1]
Kunitz was born inWorcester, Massachusetts,[2] the youngest of three children, to Yetta Helen (née Jasspon) and Solomon Z. Kunitz,[3] both of Jewish Russian Lithuanian descent.[4]
Six weeks before Stanley's birth, his father, who was a dressmaker,[4] went bankrupt and committedsuicide in Elm Park in Worcester[5][6] by drinkingcarbolic acid.[7] His mother removed every trace of Kunitz's father from the household.[5] The death of his father would be a powerful influence on Kunitz's life.[8]
Kunitz and his two older sisters, Sarah and Sophia, were raised by his mother, who had made her way fromYashwen, Kovno, Lithuania by herself in 1890,[9] and opened adry goods store.[10] She remarried in 1910 to Mark Dine.[11] The couple filed for bankruptcy in 1912 and then were indicted by theU.S. District Court for concealing assets. They pleaded guilty and turned overUSD$10,500 to the trustees.[12] Mark Dine died when Kunitz was fourteen;[3] he had a heart attack while hanging curtains.[13]
At fifteen, Kunitz moved out of the house and became a butcher's assistant.[3] Later he got a job as a cub reporter onThe Worcester Telegram, where he continued working during his summer vacations from college.[3]
Kunitz graduatedsumma cum laude in 1926 fromHarvard College with an English major and a philosophy minor,[3] and then earned amaster's degree in English from Harvard the following year. He wanted to continue his studies for a doctorate degree, but was told by the university that the Anglo-Saxon students would not like to be taught by a Jew.[3]
After Harvard, he worked as a reporter forThe Worcester Telegram, and as editor for the H. W. Wilson Company in New York City. He then founded and editedWilson Library Bulletin and started theAuthor Biographical Studies.[3] Kunitz married Helen Pearce in 1930;[3] they divorced in 1937.[14] In 1935 he moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania and befriendedTheodore Roethke.[14] He married Eleanor Evans in 1939; they had a daughter Gretchen in 1950.[14] Kunitz divorced Eleanor in 1958.[15]
At Wilson Company, Kunitz served as co-editor forTwentieth Century Authors, among other reference works. In 1931, as Dilly Tante, he editedLiving Authors, a Book of Biographies. His poems began to appear inPoetry,Commonweal,The New Republic,The Nation, andThe Dial.
During World War II, he was drafted into theArmy in 1943 as aconscientious objector, and after undergoing basic training three times, served as a noncombatant at Gravely Point, Washington in the Air Transport Command in charge of information and education. He refused acommission and was discharged with the rank ofstaff sergeant.[14]
After the war, he began a peripatetic teaching career atBennington College (1946–1949), taking over from Roethke.[14] He subsequently taught at theState University of New York at Potsdam (then the New York State Teachers College at Potsdam) as a full professor (1949–1950; summer sessions through 1954), theNew School for Social Research (lecturer; 1950-1957), theUniversity of Washington (visiting professor; 1955-1956),Queens College (visiting professor; 1956–1957),Brandeis University (poet-in-residence; 1958-1959) andColumbia University (lecturer in theSchool of General Studies; 1963–1966) before spending 18 years as an adjunct professor of writing at Columbia'sSchool of the Arts (1967–1985). Throughout this period, he also held visiting appointments atYale University (1970),Rutgers University–Camden (1974),Princeton University (1978) andVassar College (1981).[16]
After his divorce from Eleanor, he married the painter and poetElise Asher in 1958.[17] His marriage to Asher led to friendships with artists likePhilip Guston andMark Rothko.[15]
Kunitz's poetry won wide praise for its profundity and quality. He was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1987 to 1989.[18] He continued to write and publish until his centenary year, as late as 2005. Many consider that his poetry'ssymbolism is influenced significantly by the work ofCarl Jung. Kunitz influenced many 20th-century poets, includingJames Wright,Mark Doty,Louise Glück, Joan Hutton Landis, and Carolyn Kizer.
For most of his life, Kunitz divided his time between New York City andProvincetown, Massachusetts. He enjoyed gardening and maintained one of the most impressive seaside gardens in Provincetown. There he also foundedFine Arts Work Center, where he was a mainstay of the literary community, as he was ofPoets House in Manhattan.
He was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award in Sherborn, Massachusetts in October 1998 for his contribution to the liberation of the human spirit through his poetry.[19]
He died in 2006 at his home in Manhattan.[20] He had previously come close to death, and reflected on the experience in his last book, a collection of essays,The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden.
Kunitz's first collection of poems,Intellectual Things, was published in 1930. His second volume of poems,Passport to the War, was published fourteen years later; the book went largely unnoticed, although it featured some of Kunitz's best-known poems, and soon fell out of print. Kunitz's confidence was not in the best of shape when, in 1959, he had trouble finding a publisher for his third book,Selected Poems: 1928-1958. Despite this unflattering experience, the book, eventually published by Little Brown, received thePulitzer Prize for Poetry.
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
His next volume of poems would not appear until 1971, but Kunitz remained busy through the 1960s editing reference books and translating Russian poets. When twelve years laterThe Testing Tree appeared, Kunitz's style was radically transformed from the highly intellectual and philosophical musings of his earlier work to more deeply personal yet disciplined narratives; moreover, his lines shifted fromiambic pentameter to a freerprosody based on instinct and breath—usually resulting in shorter stressed lines of three or four beats.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, he became one of the most treasured and distinctive voices in American poetry. His collectionPassing Through: The Later Poems won theNational Book Award for Poetry in 1995.[21] Kunitz received many other honors, including aNational Medal of Arts, theBollingen Prize for a lifetime achievement in poetry, theRobert Frost Medal, andHarvard's Centennial Medal. He served two terms as Consultant on Poetry for theLibrary of Congress (the precursor title to Poet Laureate), one term as Poet Laureate of the United States, and one term as the State Poet ofNew York. He founded theFine Arts Work Center inProvincetown, Massachusetts, andPoets House inNew York City. Kunitz also acted as a judge for theYale Series of Younger Poets Competition.
Kunitz served as editor of theWilson Library Bulletin from 1928 to 1943. An outspoken critic of censorship, in his capacity as editor, he targeted his criticism at librarians who did not actively oppose it. He published an article in 1938 byBernard Berelson entitled "The Myth of Library Impartiality".[22] This article ledForrest Spaulding and the Des Moines Public Library to draft theLibrary Bill of Rights, which was later adopted by theAmerican Library Association and continues to serve as the cornerstone document on intellectual freedom in libraries.[23][24]
Awards for Stanley Kunitz | |||||||||||||
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