The Woodberry Poetry Room's Blue Star collection is a non-circulating collection of rare or limited-edition monographs, chapbooks, serials, typescripts, mimeographs, broadsides, photographs, and correspondence. The collection serves to augment scholars' understanding of the authors whose works we have recorded for our A/V archive; to document the work of Boston-area poets and small presses; and to illuminate aspects of the Poetry Room's literary, social, and architectural history.
Highlights from the Blue Star collection include:
- Sylvia Plath typescripts (1958)
- a mimeograph of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1956)
- Laura (Riding) Jackson's 1972 recording script
- Dudley Randall's Broadside Press broadside series
- Theodore Roethke's annotated copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies
- a signed portrait of Robert Duncan by R. B. Kitaj (1971)
- a copy of Pressed Wafer's For One Boston (2014)
- archival photographs of Robert Frost, Robert Creeley, Robert Lowell, and Marianne Moore
- John Ashbery Reading Library (cataloging in process)
The Blue Star collection also has a special focus on regional (New England/New York) literary magazines---such as Bezoar (1971-1995), Fire Exit (1968-1974), and a complete run of Telephone (1970-1983)---and correspondence and typescripts related to our A/V collection, including the letters of Boston-based audio engineer Stephen B. Fassett (1914-1980), with references to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and W. S. Merwin.
Accessing These Materials
The Blue Star collection is cataloged in HOLLIS and accessible via Houghton Library's Reading Room.