Stanley Kunitz
| Stanley Kunitz | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Stanley Jasspon Kunitz July 29, 1905 Worcester, Massachusetts, USA |
| Died | May 14, 2006 (aged 100) New York City, New York, USA |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Harvard College |
| Notable awards |
National Book Award (1995) Robert Frost Medal (1998) |
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (/ˈkjuːnɪts/; July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.
Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children, to Yetta Helen (née Jasspon) and Solomon Z. Kunitz, both of Jewish Russian Lithuanian descent.
His father, a dressmaker of Russian Jewish heritage, committed suicide in a public park six weeks before Stanley was born. After going bankrupt, he went to Elm Park in Worcester, and drank carbolic acid. His mother removed every trace of Kunitz's father from the household. The death of his father would be a powerful influence of his life.
Kunitz and his two older sisters, Sarah and Sophia, were raised by his mother, who had made her way from Yashwen, Kovno, Lithuania by herself in 1890, and opened a dry goods store. Yetta remarried to Mark Dine in 1912. Yetta and Mark filed for bankruptcy in 1912 and then were indicted by the U.S. District Court for concealing assets. They pleaded guilty and turned over USD$10,500 to the trustees. Mark Dine died when Kunitz was fourteen, when, while hanging curtains, he suffered a heart attack.
At fifteen, Kunitz moved out of the house and became a butcher's assistant. Later he got a job as a cub reporter on The Worcester Telegram, where he would continue working during his summer vacations from college.
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