| Year | Title | Publisher | Prize Amount | Judges |
| 1961 | Nude Descending a Staircase | Doubleday | $5,000 | Edward Davison |
| Babette Deutsch | ||||
| Paul Engle | ||||
| William Jay Smith | ||||
Poet X. J. (Joseph Charles) Kennedy was born in Dover, New Jersey on August 21, 1929. After studying at Seton Hall, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan, Kennedy served four years in the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet as a journalist, and then attended the Sorbonne in Paris for one year in 1955.