Description
Description
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.]
Collection Creator
Biography
Stanley Kunitz was born on July 29, 1905, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His parents,
Yetta Helen and Solomon Z. Kunitz, both Eastern European immigrants, owned and operated
a dress manufacturing company in Worcester. After graduating from Classical High School,
Kunitz left Worcester to attend Harvard University. In 1926 he received his bachelor's
degree with highest honors and was also awarded the Garrison Medal for Poetry by the
University. Kunitz remained in Cambridge to earn a master's degree, which he completed
in 1927. At this time, Kunitz returned to Worcester, where he worked as a feature
reporter for the daily newspaper, The Worcester Telegram ;
however, Kunitz grew weary of his hometown rather quickly and so left for New York City
in 1928 in search of more interesting prospects.
In New York City Kunitz secured a position at the H. W. Wilson Company, where he
edited, either alone or collaboratively, seven reference works of literary biography and
the Wilson Library Bulletin . Kunitz's first H. W. Wilson
book, Living Authors: A Book of Biographies , was published
in 1931 under the pseudonym “Dilly Tante,” and his final Wilson book, European Authors, 1000-1900 , was published in 1967. The H. W.
Wilson Company offered Kunitz a great deal of freedom to pursue his literary interests.
For instance, Kunitz was permitted to go abroad in 1929-1930, during which time he
polished the poems (and worked on an unfinished novel) that would become, upon his
return from Europe in 1930, his first published book of verse, Intellectual Things . Kunitz was also able to maintain his position at H. W.
Wilson despite having relocated from New York City to a farm in Mansfield Center,
Connecticut around 1931 with his first wife, Helen Pearce (married 1930-1937).
Although Kunitz continued to edit reference books for H. W. Wilson Company through the
1960s, he relinquished his position in 1943 when he was drafted into the U. S. Army.
Initially Kunitz petitioned to be classified as a conscientious objector, but the Army
denied his request, forcing Kunitz to serve in the military with the Air Transport
Command for the duration of the war. During his enlistment, Kunitz published his second
book of poetry, Passport to the War (1944), which was
inspired by his wartime experiences.
After his release from the service in 1945, Kunitz lived briefly in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, and then accepted his first teaching position at Bennington College in 1946.
This was to be the first of many such positions for Kunitz, who continued to teach
through the 1980s but remained determined to put writing before teaching, never
accepting a tenure-track faculty position. He left Bennington College precipitously in
1949 after a dispute with an administrator and took a position at Potsdam State College
(now SUNY College at Potsdam), Potsdam, New York, as the curriculum advisor to the
English Department. Here, he also taught summer workshops from 1949 to 1953. During this
brief (1949-1950) stay in Potsdam, Kunitz's second wife, Eleanor Evans (married
1939-1958) gave birth to their daughter, Gretchen.
In 1950 Kunitz again found himself in New York City, where he held numerous teaching
positions at various universities, colleges, and institutions, including The New School
for Social Research (1950-1957), the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA
(1958-1962), Queens College (1956-1957), and Columbia University as a lecturer
(1963-1966) and then as an adjunct professor of writing (1967-1985). He also held
teaching positions further afield in such places as the University of Washington, where
he was the poet-in-residence (1955-1956), Brandeis University (1958-1959), Yale
University (1971, fellow since 1969), Rutgers University (1974), and Princeton
University (1978-1979). In 1958 he married the painter and poet Elise Asher (1912-2004),
with whom he spent the rest of his life.
Aside from teaching, Kunitz was an active member of the greater literary community. In
1968 he helped found the Fine Arts Work Center, an artists' colony in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, and continued to be a stalwart supporter of the Center, evident in his
service on the Board of Trustees, the Executive Committee, and the writing division. As
the editor of the Yale Series of Younger Poets from 1969 to 1977, Kunitz gave rise to a
new generation of poets, including such well-known poets as Carolyn Forché and Michael
Ryan. Kunitz was also a member of the Academy of American Poets and the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters. He served as the Poetry Consultant for the Library of
Congress (1974-1976) and, along with Elizabeth Kray, founded Poets House in New York
City in 1985. At the age of 95 Kunitz was named U.S. Poet Laureate, a post he served for
two years (2000-2001). Internationally Kunitz participated in a number of cultural
exchange programs, which included trips to Russia and Poland in 1967, to Senegal and
Ghana in 1976, to Russia again in 1979, and to Israel and Egypt in 1980.
Kunitz's other publications include Selected Poems,
1928-1958 (1959), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1959, The Testing-Tree (1971), The Terrible
Threshold (1974), The Poems of Stanley Kunitz:
1928-1978 (1979), Next-to-Last Things (1985), and
Passing Through (1995), for which he received the 1995
National Book Award, The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz
(2000) and The Wild Braid (2005), a book he co-wrote with
Genine Lentine. In 1975 Kunitz published a book of prose entitled A Kind of Order, A Kind of Folly . He edited The Poems
of John Keats (1964) and The Essential Blake
(1987). In addition Kunitz has also been involved in translating poetry into English. He
collaborated with Max Hayward on Poems of Akhamatova (1973)
and, with others, translated Andrei Voznesenskii's Story under
Full Sail (1974). In 1978 he edited and co-translated the Ukrainian poet Ivan
Drach's Orchard Lamps .
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Kunitz won other
prestigious awards, which include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
(1945-1946), National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1959), Academy of American
Poets fellowship (1968), National Endowment for the Arts senior fellowship (1984),
Bollingen Prize in Poetry, Yale University Library (1987), and the National Medal of
Arts (1993).
Equally lauded for his talents as a gardener, Kunitz's Provincetown, MA home featured a
sprawling, multi-tiered garden that he had coaxed from sand. His final book, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden
(2005), co-written with Genine Lentine, reveals the interconnectedness of his writing
and gardening habits. A few months shy of his 101th birthday, Stanley Kunitz died at his
home in New York City.
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