Alma Denny
American poet

Alma Denenholz Kaplan (1906 – 1 March 2003) was an American poet and syndicated columnist who wrote under the pseudonym Alma Denny.
Life and career
Denny was born Alma Denenholz in Far Rockaway in New York City, the eldest of ten children. She received degrees from Hunter College and Teachers College, Columbia University and married a doctor, Theodore Kaplan, with whom she had two children.
Though her husband was adamant that she not work, Denny pursued a career as a freelance writer. Her light verse and vignettes appeared in Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, Light Quarterly, The New York Times, Reader's Digest, English Today, Playboy, The Wall Street Journal, The Lyric, and other popular magazines. Her poetry was widely anthologized, appearing in The Random House Treasury of Light Verse and other collections, and she was the featured poet in the Winter 1998 issue of Light Quarterly. Her first book of poetry, Blinkies: Funny Poems to Read in a Blink, was published in 1991 and was reviewed favourably by columnist Richard Lederer.
Denny was also a syndicated columnist, penning the weekly advice column "Family Council" which appeared in 40 newspapers in the 1960s. She was later a frequent contributor to The New York Times.
Denny died in her Manhattan home in March 2003, aged 96.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alma Denny” as american poet. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american poet. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16015801. VIAF identifies the subject as 63222829. The Library of Congress control number is n93077383. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 2003, 1998 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alma Denny” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.