Pulitzer-Winning Poet Stanley Kunitz Dies

Only, when loosening clothes, you lean

Out of your window sleepily,

And with luxurious lidded mien

Sniff at the bitter dark -- dear she,

Think somewhat gentle of, between

Love ended and beginning, me.

Championed by the eminent critic William Rose Benet, Mr. Kunitz remained obscure to the general public even as he won occasional awards from poetry magazines.

He found work in New York for the H.W. Wilson publishing company, editing biographical reference books. Using the pen name Dilly Tante, he also became a columnist for the influential Wilson Library Bulletin.

One column in 1936 denounced racial segregation at libraries and was not appreciated by his employer.

"Old Mr. Wilson was disturbed that especially the Southern libraries would stop buying the Wilson company books," he told a publication of the American Library Association last year. "I had to persuade him that I had no intention of changing and if he wanted me to continue my editorial work, he would have to be reconciled to changes."

A pacifist, and in his late thirties, he was drafted by the Army during World War II. He dug latrines on a mostly black base in North Carolina. Aghast that so many fellow soldiers couldn't say why they were fighting, he rethought his politics and started a magazine to explain it all. He said he "realized the war had to be fought, to end the horrible possibility of the fascists taking over."

In later years, he later voiced contempt for the Vietnam War, U.S. support for right-leaning juntas in Central America and the U.S.-led war against Iraq. "The poet can't change anything," he said, "but the poet can demonstrate the power of the solitary conscience."