Poets House was founded by former Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz and Elizabeth Kray in order to provide "a place for poetry" in American culture, a warm and welcoming "meeting place, a house of hospitality as well as a house of books." With this felicitous and generous wish, Poets House first opened its doors to the public in 1986 with 600 books donated by poet, philosopher and literary critic Paul Zweig, and support from The Reed Foundation.

Over the last two decades, the Poets House collection (now comprising 50,000 volumes of poetry) has developed solely by donation and reflects the broad reading of its founders and donors.

The Poets House collection now includesdonations from the estates of founders Paul Zweig and Elizabeth Kray, as well as poets David Craig Austin, Olga Cabral, Roger Hecht, William Matthews, Eve Merriam, and May Sarton. A significant donation has also been made by founder Stanley Kunitz.

Personal donations are supplemented by the donations of publishers. Through the Poets House Showcase, Poets House collects all of the books published in the United States year by year, actively soliciting new publications from commercial, university and independent presses throughout the country. Through the Showcase alone over two thousand books are added to the collection each year. In addition, we welcome the donation of backlist titles from publishers and encourage the donation of gift subscriptions from literary journals.

In recognition of the role of Poets House plays as our national poetry archive, the Poetry Society of America recently donated the majority of the Van Voorhis collection to us, thereby making it available to the more than 16,000 people who visit the library each year.