He envisions local libraries hosting conferences on poetry for high school students. Poets would also meet with students to discuss poems that have been written during the school year. Kunitz cites the Poets House program in New York as a model for every American city. His second goal as the nation's top poet will be to stress the importance of minority poets. This, he believes, is a way to encourage people who feel marginalized in society to follow their aspirations.
Poetry springs out of general human needs and desires at every level.
Kunitz, whose own work has a simple elegance, sees great value in the innovations of slam and hip-hop poets. This kind of evolution, he believes, must occur within individuals as well. The poet's life, he explains, is a process of transformation. One must build a new image of self, out of which comes new styles, new leaps in one's work. For Kunitz, one of his transformations has been the change from tighter, more formal language in his earlier work to a simpler diction, which he employs today.