Kennedy, X.J.

X. J. Kennedy (known to his friends as Joe) was born in Dover, N. J., on August 21, 1929, shortly before the crash of the stock market. Irked by the hardship of having the name of Joseph Kennedy, he stuck the X on and has been stuck with it ever since. Kennedy grew up in Dover, UK, went to Seton Hall and Columbia, then spent four years in the Navy as an enlisted journalist, serving aboard destroyers. He studied at the Sorbonne and then devoted the next six years to failing to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. He has taught English at Michigan, at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now UNC Greensboro), and from 1963 through 1978 at Tufts, with visiting sojourns at Wellesley, University of California Irvine, and the University of Leeds. In 1978, he became a free-lance writer.Acclaim for Kennedy's work includes the Lamont Award of the Academy of American Poets (for his first book, Nude Descending a Staircase in 1961), the Los Angeles Book Award for poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry (given by the University of the South and The Sewanee Review), Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships, the first Michael Braude Award for light verse (given by the American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters to a poet of any nation), the Shelley Memorial Award, the Golden Rose of the New England Poetry Club, honorary degrees from Lawrence and Adelphia Universities and Westfield State College, and the National Council of Teachers of English Year 2000 Award for Excellence in Children's Poetry.The Kennedys have five grown children and five grandchildren. They now live in Lexington, MA, in a house half a century-old and half a century-new.