100 years is a pretty good run. Poet Stanley Kunitz (Intellectual Things which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, The Wild Braid, and Passing Through: The Later Poems) died on Sunday from complications with pneumonia. Kunitz served twice as U.S. Poet Laureate, was honored with the National Medal of the Arts, the Robert Frost Medal, The National Book Award, and Harvard’s Centennial Medal. He also served a term as the state poet for New York where he founded the Poets House. Kunitz worked well into his 90’s writing and even appearing in public to speak about and read his work. “I never think of myself as having outlived my useful existence,” he remarked in 2000. Aside from his breadth of work and longevity Kunitz will be remembered for his work in helping out aspiring young poets, “I think all artists, and especially poets, are forever in search of a community.” That community is now lessened by his passing.
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