US EditionXJ Kennedy, Prize-Winning Poet and Educator, Dies at 96
X.J. Kennedy edited a leading college composition book and won major poetry awards, influencing generations with his witty, dark rhymes and children's literature.
- X.J. Kennedy, an award-winning poet, author, translator and educator, died Sunday at age 96 at his home in Peabody, Massachusetts, his daughter Dr. Kate Kennedy reported.
- Beginning in the early 1960s he produced dozens of poetry and children's books and published his first book in 1961, teaching at the University of Michigan, the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, and Tufts University.
- Born Joseph Charles Kennedy, he adopted the name X.J. Kennedy to avoid confusion with Joseph P. Kennedy and was active in the Spectator Amateur Press Association, blending light and dark tones in poems published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
- He leaves five children and six grandchildren, and his wife and collaborator Dorothy Mintzlaff, who died in 2018, is also remembered for her work with him.
- His awards included a Los Angeles Times book prize and the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal, and his work on The Bedford Reader reached millions of students.
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29 Articles
Associated Press News
XJ Kennedy, prize-winning poet and educator, dead at 96
An award-winning poet, author, translator and educator has died. X.J. Kennedy was 96. He schooled millions of students through “The Bedford Reader” and other textbooks and engaged voluntary readers with his children’s stories and intricate, witty verse.
X.J. Kennedy, one of the most beloved and prolific American poets of the 20th century and early 21st at the age of 96. Born as Joseph Charles Kennedy adopted the pseudonym "X.J. Kennedy". He was a poetry editor at The Paris Review during the 1960s, a key time for contemporary American poetry. Kennedy stood out for his loyalty to traditional forms: rhyme, metrics and classical structures, in an era dominated by free verse. His poetry combined wit…
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