Stanley Kunitz 1905-2006

The Fine Arts Work Center mourns the loss of one of their founders, the poet and former US Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz who died May 14, 2006 at his home in New York at the age of 100.

FAWC Executive Director Hunter O'Hanian released the following statement, written by Provincetown writer, Roger Skillings, a lifelong friend and colleague of Kunitz:

"We have lost a dear friend, a great poet, a surpassing philanthropist and a wise patriarch.

"Stanley Kunitz was a rare fusion of the visionary and the practical man of expertise. His central role in the founding of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Poets' House in New York City may be unprecedented accomplishments in the history of American Arts and Letters.

"His steadfast labors and large generosity inspired generations of disciples, 'the tribe of his true affections,' who united in helping to bring his dreams to fruition. His contributions of money, care and genius on behalf of the arts set the standard for what 'giving' really means.

"A matchless love and knowledge of poetry made him a beloved sage among young and old alike. His readings over the last many years invariably attracted packed houses, and had the character of exalted events. No one who ever heard him read is likely to forget the outcry of his thrilling voice. And he was generous where envy often reigns-- one of his last evenings at the Work Center was devoted wholly to Theodore Roethke, and his next to last was a lecture on Paul Celan, the poet of the Holocaust.

"He was a man of nature, gladly, proudly part and parcel of it, and had neither fear nor rue of death. He wrote at night into the dawn hours, by day loved to work in his now famous tiered garden, a barren sand dune when he and his late wife Elise Asher bought the house at 32 Commercial Street, long since become a point of pilgrimage.

"Steely in self-discipline, chaste of spirit, adventurous in pursuit of the transcendental, he was extraordinarily kind and understanding, especially to young poets, a friend's friend, who could criticize without wounding, and remonstrate when needed. Thanks to his efforts recognition came early to poets, who otherwise might have gone long unappreciated.

"To him poetry was not an art but a life, not only words but a quest for the basics of human existence, the web that binds all things together. A profoundly joyful, moral being, his spirit touched countless thousands in his century of years. He leaves a legacy to be reflected upon with gratitude and rededication."

Stanley Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905. His many books of poetry include The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton, 2000); Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (1995), which won the National Book Award; Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays (1985); The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Passport to the War (1940); Selected Poems, 1928-1958, which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Testing-Tree (1971); and Intellectual Things (1930). He also co-translated Orchard Lamps by Ivan Drach (1978), Story Under Full Sail by Andrei Voznesensky (1974), and Poems of Akhmatova (1973), and edited The Essential Blake (1987), Poems of John Keats (1964), and The Yale Series of Younger Poets (1969-77).

His honors include the Bollingen Prize, a Ford Foundation grant, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Harvard's Centennial Medal, the Levinson Prize, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Medal of the Arts, and the Shelley Memorial Award. He served for two years as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, was designated State Poet of New York, and is a Chancellor Emeritus of The Academy of American Poets. In 2000 he was named United States Poet Laureate. A founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in New York City, he taught for many years in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. He lived in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Burial arrangements will be private. A memorial service for the public will be planned this summer at FAWC.