Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Jaspoon Kunitz was a resident of Lumberville in the late 1950s and was instrumental in organizing the New Hope Workshop in Jo Jenks' studio on Mechanic Street. This elite group of writers included luminaries such as Josephine Herbst, Jean Toomer, and Jules Gregory. While affiliated with the New Hope Group, he taught contemporary poetry and was associated with the members of the Cooperative Painting Project, which met Thursdays in painter Charles Evans' studio.

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1926, Kunitz went on to earn an M.A. from the institution the following year. He spent about forty years as a professor of English and Writing, and was a lecturer at several schools including Bennington College, Potsdam State Teachers College, and Columbia University. His career in education also took him around the country as a visiting lecturer and professor at Yale and Rutgers University, among others.

Kunitz was best known as a poet who had published dozens of volumes. Selected Poems 1928-1958 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959. He continued to win awards as recently as 1995, when, at the age of ninety, he won the National Book Award for the collection, Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected. Kunitz admired the poems of William Blake and was influenced heavily by him. Other writers whom Kunitz admired were Rudyard Kipling, Keats, and Wordsworth. In the age of computers, Kunitz still wrote his ideas in a notebook, later typing them on an old manual typewriter. He was twice U.S. poet laureate. Kunitz died May 14, 2006 at the age of one hundred.

Education and Training
A.B. Summa Cum Laude, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926
M.A., Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1927

Teachers and Influences
One of Stanley Kunitz's favorite poets was William Blake. He was also an avid reader of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Service, John Keats, and William Wordsworth.

Connection to Bucks County
Stanley Kunitz was a former resident of Lumberville. In the late 1950s, he was instrumental in organizing the New Hope Workshop in Jo Jenks' studio on Mechanic Street. He also taught contemporary poetry. Kunitz was associated with the members of the Cooperative Painting Project, which met on Thursday afternoons in painter Charles Evans' New Hope studio during the late 1930s.

Colleagues and Affiliations
The New Hope Workshop existed for about two years with participants including Josephine Herbst, Jean Garrigue, Jean Toomer, Jules Gregory and others. The members of the Cooperative Painting Project included Charles Evans, Charles Frederick Ramsey, Louis Stone, Karl Roos, and others.

Affiliations and Memberships
Member of Staff Writing Division, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1968
Fellow, Yale University, 1969
Library of Congress, Consultant on Poetry, 1974-1976
Honorary Consultant in American Letters, 1976-1983

Nonfiction
Editor of:
Living Authors, 1931
Authors Today and Yesterday, 1933
Junior Book of Authors, 1934
British Authors of the Nineteenth Century, 1936
American Authors 1600-1900, 1938
Twentieth Century Authors, 1942; first supplement, 1955
British Authors Before 1800, 1952
Poems of John Keats, 1964
European Authors 1000-1900, 1967
The Essential Blake, 1987

Essays
The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, collaboration with Genine Lentine, 2005

Publications
Contributor to:
Atlantic, New Republic, New Yorker, Antaeus, New York Review of Books, American Poetry Review, and Harper's
Translator:
Verse Antiworlds by A. Voznesensky, 1966
Antiworlds and the Fifth Ace, 1967
Stolen Apples by Y. Yevtushenko, with Max Hayward, 1971
Poems of Akhmatova, 1973
Story Under Full Sail by A. Voznesensky, 1974

Poetry
Intellectual Things, 1930
Passport To The War, 1944
Selected Poems 1928-1958, 1958
The Testing Tree
The Terrible Threshold
The Coat Without a Seam, 1974
A Kind of Order, A Kind of Folly: Essays and Conversations, 1975
The Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1978, 1979
The Wellfleet Whale and Companion Poems, 1983
Next to Last Things: New Poems and Essays, 1985
Interviews and Encounters, 1993
Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, 1995
The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 2000

Teaching and Professional Appointments
Professor of English, Bennington College, 1946-1949
Professor of English, Pottsdam State Teachers College, 1949-1950
Lecturer in English, New School for Social Research, New York City, 1950-1958
Poetry Center of Young Men's Hebrew Association, New York City, 1958-1962
Lecturer, Columbia University, 1963-1966
Adjunct Professor of Writing in the School of Arts, 1967-1985
Visiting Senior Fellow, Council of the Humanities and Old Dominion Fellow in Creative Writing, Princeton University, 1978-1979
Director of Seminar, Potsdam Summer Workshop in Creative Arts, 1949-1953
Literary Doctorate, Clark University, 1961; Anna Marie College, 1977 Honorary Literary Doctorate, Worcester State College, 1980
Poet in Residence, University of Washington, 1955-1956; Queens College, 1956-1957; Brandeis University, 1958-1959; and Princeton University, 1979
Danforth Visiting Lecturer at Colleges and Universities in the United States, 1961-1963
Visiting Professor, Yale University, 1972
Visiting Professor, Rutgers University, 1974
Lectured and gave poetry readings under cultural exchange program in: USSR and Poland, 1967; Senegal and Ghana, 1976; and Israel and Egypt, 1980
Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets

Awards
Oscar Blumenthal Prize, 1941
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1945-1946
Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, 1953-1954
Levinson Prize, Poetry Magazine, 1956
Saturday Review Award, 1957
Ford Foundation Grant, 1958-1959
Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, University of Chicago, 1958
National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, 1959
Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems 1928-1958, 1959
Brandeis University Creative Art Award Medal, 1965
Academy of American Poets Fellowship, 1968
New England Poetry Club Golden Rose Trophy, 1970
American Library Association Notable Book Citation for the Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1978, 1979
Lenore Marshall Award for Poetry, 1980
National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship, 1984
Bollingen Prize in Poetry, Yale University Library, 1987
Walt Whitman Award Citation of Merit with designation as State Poet of New York, 1987
Brandeis Medal of Achievement, 1965
National Book Award for Poetry, Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, 1995
United States Poet Laureate, 2000