[4] Six weeks before Stanley's birth, his father, who was a dressmaker,[4] went bankrupt and committed suicide in Elm Park in Worcester[5][6] by drinking carbolic acid.

[8] Kunitz and his two older sisters, Sarah and Sophia, were raised by his mother, who had made her way from Yashwen, Kovno, Lithuania by herself in 1890,[9] and opened a dry goods store.

[10] She remarried in 1910 to Mark Dine[11] The couple filed for bankruptcy in 1912 and then were indicted by the U.S. District Court for concealing assets.

He wanted to continue his studies for a doctorate degree, but was told by the university that the Anglo-Saxon students would not like to be taught by a Jew.

During World War II, he was drafted into the Army in 1943 as a conscientious objector, and after undergoing basic training three times, served as a noncombatant at Gravely Point, Washington in the Air Transport Command in charge of information and education.

Kunitz influenced many 20th-century poets, including James Wright, Mark Doty, Louise Glück, Joan Hutton Landis, and Carolyn Kizer.

There he also founded Fine Arts Work Center, where he was a mainstay of the literary community, as he was of Poets House in Manhattan.

In a murderous timethe heart breaks and breaksand lives by breaking.It is necessary to gothrough dark and deeper darkand not to turn.

His next volume of poems would not appear until 1971, but Kunitz remained busy through the 1960s editing reference books and translating Russian poets.

When twelve years later The Testing Tree appeared, Kunitz's style was radically transformed from the highly intellectual and philosophical musings of his earlier work to more deeply personal yet disciplined narratives; moreover, his lines shifted from iambic pentameter to a freer prosody based on instinct and breath—usually resulting in shorter stressed lines of three or four beats.

He founded the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in New York City.