KUNITZ, STANLEY JASSPON

KUNITZ, STANLEY JASSPON (1905– ), U.S. poet and editor. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, of Russian parents Kunitz applied himself to mastering the English language while still a child, and the acquisition of new words became his hobby. Educated at Harvard, he taught poetry at the New School for Social Research and at Brandeis and Columbia universities. His first verse collection, Intellectual Things (1930) was well received, as was his second, Passportto the War (1944). His Selected Poems 1928–1958 (1958), received the Pulitzer Prize and other awards. Kunitz's The Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928–1978 was published in Boston (1979) and was awarded the Leonore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1980. Of special note are his A Kind of Order, A Kind of Folly: Essays and Conversations (1975); Collected Poems (2000), and The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century within the Garden (2005). With Howard Haycraft, Kunitz also gained distinction as the editor of reference works on literature, for some of which he used the pen name "Dilly Tante." Works of this kind include: Authors Today and Yesterday (1933); American Authors 1600–1900 (1938); and Twentieth Century Authors (1942; First Supplement, 1955). -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Henault, Stanley Kunitz (1980); G. Orr, Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to his poetry (1985). (Milton Henry Hindus / Lewis Fried (2nd ed.)