new york (jta) | Stanley Kunitz, a former U.S. poet laureate who made metaphoric use of the Talmud and other Jewish images in his poetry, died Sunday, May 14 at age 100.
Kunitz, who was known for writing on themes ranging from life and death to gardens, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1959.
The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, he gave up his dream of earning a Harvard doctorate after being told that non-Jewish students wouldn’t enjoy being taught English literature by a Jew.
A pacifist, Kunitz was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and, later, U.S. military involvement in Central America and Iraq.
Kunitz had just turned 95 when appointed poet laureate in 2000, capping a career that began 70 years earlier with the collection “Intellectual Things.”