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Guide to the Marjorie Perloff Papers
M1504
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Title: Marjorie Perloff papers
Dates: ca. 1965-2005
Collection number: M1504
Creator:
Perloff, Marjorie
Collection Size:
19 linear ft.
Repository:
Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.
Abstract: Literary manuscripts, correspondence with writers, artists, fellow critics, and publishers, published essays and reviews,
editorial and university administration files, and electronic discs.
Languages:
Languages represented in the collection:
English
Collection is open for research; materials must be requested at least 24 hours in advance of intended use.
Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To obtain
permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Public Services Librarian of the Dept. of Special Collections.
Marjorie Perloff papers, M1504. Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Gift of Marjorie Perloff, 2005. Accession 2005-097
Biography / Administrative History
Marjorie Perloff is one of the foremost American critics of contemporary poetry. Her work has been especially concerned
with explicating the writing of experimental and avant-garde poets and relating it to the major currents of modernist and,
especially, postmodernist activity in the arts, including the visual arts and cultural theory. She took her first degree at
Barnard College, New York, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. (in 1965) at CUA (Catholic University of America) in Washington DC.
CUA also provided her first teaching post (as assistant and then associate professor) from 1966 to 1971. She moved to the
University of Maryland as full professor in 1971, remaining there five years before moving to California in 1976. She has
been
a professor at Californian universities since 1976, with ten years at the University of Southern California, till 1986, and
since then at Stanford University, becoming Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities in 1990. Her immense energies and
enthusiasm as a writer and teacher have been devoted to creating a public for the work of writers whom many others have wanted
to dismiss as too difficult, obscure, or marginal. Her own writing is always anything but that; as Frank Kermode has said,
Marjorie Perloff is fun to read. She has never been a critic who wraps her insights in a daunting verbal carapace which only
the truly intrepid can penetrate. She writes to explain, and always communicates her insights through vivid juxtapositions,
formulations, and examples.
From The Encyclopedia of Literary Critics and Criticism, Edited by Chris Murray. (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999)
Scope and Content of Collection
The Marjorie Perloff papers are divided into twelve series, respecting the original arrangement and box inventory provided
by the donor. Series 1: Correspondence from Individuals, contains letter and notes from over seventy correspondees, including
Robert Creeley, Barbara Guest, Ann Lauterbach, Robert Lowell, and Robert Pinsky. Nearly one third of the collection is held
in
Series Two: Article Files, primarily material relating to published articles, and to a lesser extent, papers delivered at
conferences or lectures. Reviews and Offprints, Series 3, contains copies of articles where either Perloff's worked is reviewed,
or Perloff is the reviewer. Several folders at the end of the series hold the contents of scrapbooks specific to some of
Perloff's earlier works: "The Poetic Art of Robert Lowell"; "Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters"; and "The Poetics of Indeterminacy:
Rimbaud to Cage." Invitations to Give Papers and Conference Materials are found in Series 4, and, in Series 5: Early Works,
a ts
of Perloff's Master's Thesis, and editorial, correspondence, and publicity files for her works on Yeats, Lowell, and O'Hara
are
housed here. Series 6 and 7 contain material from several of Perloff's more recent works, listed by title respectively:
The Futurist Moment/21st Century Modernism; Radical Wittengenstein's Ladder/Radical Artifice; and Series 8: Poetry/Genre/Cage
similarly holds material from her various editorial projects, collections of essays, and shorter works, including
John Cage: Composed in America, Postmodern Genres, Poetry On and Off the Page, Dance of the Intellect, and Poetic License.
Other Editorial Files not included in the previous series are found in Series 9, and Miscellaneous files regarding awards
and
honors, and a review of Erica Jong are located in Series 10. Series 11 contains material concerning Perloff's various university
appointments and administrative matters. The final Series: Foundations/Centers/Fellowships Applications, Advising, and Consults,
holds correspondence, applications, and other material regarding Perloff's involvement with various granting agencies and
institutions as both a potential recipient and consultant.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in
the library's online public access catalog.
American poetry- -20th century- -History and criticism
Art and literature- - United States- -History- -20th century
Arts, Modern- -20th century
Literature, Modern- -History and criticism
Modernism (Literature)
Poetics
Critics- -United States