Rae Armantrout papers, circa 1970-2022

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Summary

Creators:
Armantrout, Rae
Abstract:
The collection documents Rae Armantrout's writing and teaching career from the 1970s through 2022.
Extent:
23 Linear Feet (48 manuscript boxes, 3 half boxes) and 28.16 gigabyte(s) (digital files, including 2 email accounts)
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Rae Armantrout papers (M1211). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection contains correspondence, notebooks, typescripts, teaching materials, and photographs. Much of the correspondence, from the late 1970s to 2022, consists of substantive letters and emails from other poets and writers, including Lydia Davis, Fanny Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, and Ron Silliman. The notebooks in the collection record random thoughts from which Armantrout's poems often evolved. The collection also includes typescripts for Armantrout's books, including Precedence (1985), Necromance (1989), Made to Seem (1995), True (1996), Versed (2009), Just Saying (2013), Itself (2015), and Wobble (2018), 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-1980s to the 2010s. Additional materials in the addendum include some personal papers, reviews, and drafts of speeches and talks given by Armantrout.

Biographical / historical:

Poet and essayist Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, in 1947 and grew up in San Diego. Graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, she studied under Denise Levertov. Armantrout also received a master's degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University in 1975. Armantrout is the author of many books, including, Versed (2009), for which she won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She also was a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry in 2008 and received a National Book Critics Circle AwardA 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. 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). In addition to her literary output, Armantrout taught at the University of California, San Diego, for more than two decades.

Acquisition information:
Accession numbers: MSS.2001-095, MSS.2001-140. This collection was purchased by Stanford University, Special Collections in April and May 2001. Additional materials were acquired in 2022.
Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in six series:

Series 1: Correspondence

Series 2: Notebooks

Series 3: Writing

Series 4: Teaching Materials

Series 5: Photographs

Series 6: Addendum - Accession 2022-125

Physical location:
Special Collections materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36 hours in advance.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The collection is open for research, with the exception of the born-digital materials, which are closed until processed. Note that material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Two files in the 2022 addendum are restricted until 2032 and 2037.

Terms of access:

While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Rae Armantrout papers (M1211). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Location of this collection:
Department of Special Collections, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6004, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
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