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
- Theodore Roethke's annotated copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies
- Dudley Randall's Broadside Press broadside series
- 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
- first editions and association copies, ranging from John Ashbery's Some Trees to Denise Levertov's copy of William Carlos Williams' early prose
- the John Ashbery Reading Library (currently being cataloged)
The Blue Star collection also has a special focus on regional literary magazines, such as the Gloucester-based magazine Bezoar (1971-1995), and correspondence related to our A/V collection, including the letters of Boston-based audio engineer and musicologist Stephen B. Fassett.
Accessing These Materials
The Blue Star collection is cataloged in HOLLIS and accessible via Houghton Library's Reading Room.