Former poet laureate Stanley Kunitz dies

? Stanley Kunitz, a former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner whose expressive verse, social commitment and generosity to young writers spanned three-quarters of a century, died Sunday. He was 100.

He died in his sleep at his home in Manhattan, said his publisher, W.W. Norton.

Kunitz had just turned 95 when he was appointed poet laureate in 2000, capping a career that began 70 years earlier with the collection “Intellectual Things” and later included a Pulitzer, a National Medal of the Arts and – at age 90 – a National Book Award.

He served a single one-year term as U.S. poet laureate and was also the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the precursor to poet laureate, from 1974 to 1976.