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NEW YORK, May 16, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Former U.S. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz, whose acclaimed career spanned nearly 80 years, has died in New York at age 100.
Kunitz died Sunday of pneumonia, the New York Times reported.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1959, the National Book Award in 1995, the National Medal of the Arts in 1993 and the Bollingen Prize in poetry in 1987 and was named poet laureate of the United States at age 95.
Kunitz worked well into his 90's, the Times said, and published his last book in 2005, "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden," a collection of essays and conversations produced along with his assistant, Genine Lentine.
Kunitz began writing poetry while a student at Harvard and graduated with highest honors in 1922. He started working on his doctorate, but dropped out after getting his master's degree when he was told he could not have a lectureship at Harvard because students would resent being taught English literature by a Jew, The Times said.
Times changed and after World War II he started a long career of teaching and founding arts centers. He taught at Vermont's Bennington College, New York State's Teachers College in Potsdam, University of Washington, Queens College, Vassar, Brandeis, Columbia, Yale and Rutgers, among others.
His third wife, artist Elise Asher, died in 2004 at age 92.
He is survived by a daughter, a stepdaughter, two grandchildren and three step-grandchildren.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
