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.]