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Guide to the Rae Armantrout Papers, circa 1970-2001
M.1211
M.1211
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Table of contents
Title: Rae Armantrout papers
Identifier/Call Number: M.1211
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
10.5 Linear feet
(21 manuscript boxes, 1 half box)
Date (inclusive): circa 1970-2001
Physical Location: Special Collections materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36 hours in advance. For more information on paging collections,
see the department's website: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html.
creator:
Armantrout, Rae, 1947-
[Identification of item], Rae Armantrout papers, M1211. Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford,
Calif.
The collection is open for research, except box 22, which is closed until 2021.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the
Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent
is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.
Accession numbers: MSS.2001-095, MSS.2001-140. This collection was purchased by Stanford University, Special Collections in
April and May 2001.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection contains correspondence, notebooks, typescripts, teaching materials, and photographs. Much of the correspondence,
from the late 1970's to the present, consists of substantive letters and emails from other poets and writers, including Fanny
Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, and Ron Silliman. The notebooks in the collection record random thoughts from which Armantrout's
poems often evolve, as well as multiple versions of both published and unpublished work. The collection also includes typescripts
for Armantrout's books, including
Precedence (1985),
Necromance (1989),
Made to Seem (1995),
True (1996), as well as typescripts for other miscellaneous poems and essays. Teaching materials in the collection consist of Armantrout's
lecture notes, syllabi, and course readers for classes on poetry and personal narrative taught at the University of California,
San Diego from the mid-1980's to the present.
The poet and essayist Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California on 13 April 1947 and grew up in San Diego. Graduating
from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970, she later received a Master's degree in creative writing at San Francisco
State University in 1975. Armantrout is the author of many books, including, among others,
Extremities (1978),
The Invention of Hunger (1979),
Precedence (1985)
Necroromance (1991),
Made to Seem (1995),
Writing the Plot about Sets (1998),
True (a memoir, 1998),
The Pretext (2001),
Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001),
Up to Speed (2004), and
Next Life (2007). A founding member of the West Coast "Language Poetry" movement, Armantrout worked closely with a dynamic group of
writers including Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Barret Watten, Tom Mandel, and Carla Harryman. Although
Language poetry can be seen as advocating a poetics of nonreferentiality, Armantrout's work, focusing as it often does on
the local and the domestic, resists such definitions. Internationally known, Armantrout's work has been the subject of numerous
essays (some of which are gathered in
A Wild Salience: The Writings of Rae Armantrout, a collection dedicated to her work), and an entry in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography (vol. 193). Currently, she teaches at the University of California, San Diego.
The collection is arranged in five series:
Series I: Correspondence
Series II: Notebooks
Series III: Writing
Series IV: Teaching Materials
Series V: Photographs
Fanny Howe Papers, M0648, M0768, M0848
Marjorie Perloff Papers, M1504
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Armantrout, Rae, 1947-
Davis, Lydia.
Hejinian, Lyn.
Howe, Fanny
Perelman, Bob
Silliman, Ronald, 1946-
American literature -- Poetry -- 20th Century
Women authors.