Stanley Kunitz Papers

The Stanley Kunitz Papers contain wide-ranging materials accumulated by the poet
over his lifetime. The collection includes various manuscripts and galley proofs of
books, poems, fiction, nonfiction, translations (books and individual poems), and
college writings by Kunitz. In addition, it includes a considerable amount of
correspondence, which constitutes the bulk of the collection, exchanged between
Kunitz and members of his family, friends, fellow literati, publishers, editors,
literary journals, and institutions. Some of the major literary figures represented
in the correspondence are Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, Peter Davison, Louise
Glück, Denise Levertov, Robert (Cal) Lowell, Marianne Moore, Theodore Roethke,
Michael Ryan, Anne Sexton, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Richard Wilbur. There
is also a good deal of correspondence with such institutions and corporations as the
Academy of American Poets, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters,
Columbia University, and the Atlantic Monthly Press. The collection also contains papers (correspondence, documents, and printed
materials) from the H. W. Wilson Company, where Kunitz worked as an editor
(1928-1943), the U. S. Army (1943-1945), the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown,
Massachusetts (1968-1997), and the Library of Congress, where Kunitz served as the
Poetry Consultant (1974-1976) and later as U.S. Poet Laureate (2000-2001). Also found
in the collection are some papers of others, including a poem entitled “The
Gettysburg Address” by Robert Lowell, multiple manuscripts of Louise Glück, and the
book manuscripts that Kunitz chose while editor of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Also included in the Papers are teaching materials, ephemera from readings, travel
files, documents, calendars, memorabilia, photographs, annotated books,
audiocassettes, and printed material. Most notable among these materials are the
photographs of Kunitz, Elise Asher, and their friends. [Note that the Leonard Milberg
Collection of American Poetry in the Rare Books Division holds printed books and
materials by Kunitz.]