Stanley Kunitz, the recently named incoming Poet Laureate of the United States, celebrated his appointment and the remodelling of the Stanley Kunitz Common Room at a rededication ceremony at the Fine Arts Work Center on Saturday, August 26. Kunitz, who served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1974-1976 (before the title was changed to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry), succeeds Robert Pinsky, who is finishing a three-year term. Pinsky serves as a member on both the Fine Arts Work Center's Writing Committee and the Board of Trustees, and read at the Work Center as part of the Rededication ceremony. Joining Robert Pinsky were other noted poets and speakers, including Grace Paley, Gail Mazur, Gerald Stern, Gregory Orr, and Cleopatra Mathis.
Stanley Kunitz, Incoming Poet Laureate
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Founded in 1968, the Fine Arts Work Center was originally housed on the corner of Bradford and Standish streets, and moved to its present location, a former lumberyard, in 1973. Each year, twenty emerging artists and writers are selected from among more than a thousand applicants from around the world, and awarded seven-month fellowships to focus on their work. For the past two years, the winners of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction have been former Work Center Fellows: Jhumpa Lahiri (for Interpreter of Maladies) and Michael Cunningham (for The Hours).
One of the Fine Arts Work Center's founders, Kunitz has been a steadfast supporter of the Center, and a mentor to many of the Fellows, writers and visual artists alike. The Common Room was first dedicated and named for Kunitz in 1988, when it was transformed from a coal bin to a large open space meant to accomodate readings, slide talks, and gatherings. Recent renovations, made possible by the donations of many generous Work Center friends, have covered the Common Room's cold concrete floors with wood, installed a new sound system, and spruced up the decor with wainscoting. A fund-raising drive in the name of Michael Kirchmayer, an architect who served on the Work Center's Facilities Committee and Board of Advisors and who long sought to have the windows replaced, has succeeded in financing the replacement of the Common Room windows. Pleased with the room's new look, Kunitz said "I was proud that the room was named for me, but I always felt it was damned ugly. Now I think it is beautiful and hospitable and attractive, comfortable."
Kunitz divides his time between Provincetown and New York, where he was one of the founders of Poets House. He has published ten books of poetry, including Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (W.W. Norton, 1995), which won the National Book Award; Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays (1985); The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978; The Testing Tree (1971); Selected Poems 1928-1958, which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Intellectual Things (1930). In addition to the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, other honors and awards include the National Medal of the Arts, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Harvard's Centennial Medal, the Levinson Prize, a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Frost Medal. He was designated State Poet of New York, is a Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Reading in honor of the Rededication and Kunitz's recent appointment were be several noted poets and speakers, all dear friends of Stanley's.
Robert Pinsky has published several volumes of poetry, including his New and Collected Poems published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in Spring 1996, and was awarded the Landon Translation Prize and the The Los Angeles Times Book Award in 1995 for his translation of The Inferno of Dante.
Grace Paley has had a substantial impact on American social and literary culture for more than four decades. Her Collected Stories was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award; other honors and awards include the 1994 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Literary Arts Award, The Vermont Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center's 1998 Medal for Distinguished Services in the Arts.
Gail Mazur is the author of Nightfire, The Pose of Happiness, and The Common; her fourth collection, They Can't Take That Away From Me will appear in 2001. She is Poet-in-Residence in the graduate writing program at Emerson College and director of The Blacksmith House Poetry Series.
Gerald Stern's collection, This Time: New and Selected Poems (Norton), received the National Book Award in Poetry for 1998. His other awards include the Lamont Prize for Lucky Life, three NEA awards, the Academy Fellowship, and the Ruth Lilly Prize.
Cleopatra Mathis is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Guardian. Her awards include a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Robert Frost Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the Lavan Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets.
"Dawn" by Elise Asher, 1983
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The Rededication coincided with "Off the Wall," an exhibition of paintings by Elise Asher, Kunitz's wife of 42 years. The show will hang in the Hudson D. Walker Gallery from August 20 through September 6, with an opening reception on Friday, August 25, from 6 -8 pm.
The event was sponsored by the Provincetown Banner, and was held in the Stanley Kunitz Common Room on August 26, 2000 at 7:00 pm. The attending crowd spilled out of the room and onto the grounds on either side of the Common Room. Among the crowd was a film crew from PBS, a video documentary artists, and many of Stanley's friends and family.
