Mr. [Stanley] Kunitz was regarded as a mentor to many poets, including two future poet laureates, Louise Gluck and Robert Hass, as well as Sylvia Plath.

"Essentially," he once said, "what I try to do is to help each person rediscover the poet within himself. I say 'rediscover,' because I am convinced that it is a universal human attribute to want to play with words, to beat out rhythms, to fashion images, to tell a story, to construct forms."

He added: "The key is always in his possession: what prevents him from using it is mainly inertia, the stultification of the senses as a result of our one-sided educational conditioning and the fear of being made ridiculous or ashamed by the exposure of his feelings."

(from Kunitz's obituary in the Washington Post, 2006)