Kunitz, Stanley Jasspon (1905–2006)

US poet and editor. He is known for his finely crafted poetry, as in Selected Poems 1928–1958 (1959), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and his exploration of the relationship between life and death. He served as US Poet Laureate in 2000.

Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied at Harvard University, gaining his MA in 1927. He published Intellectual Things, his first book of poetry, in 1930. After serving in the US army during World War II, he taught at many institutions, notably Columbia University (1967–85). He is also known for editing several reference works on US and European literature.