Jerome Rothenberg Papers, bulk 1944-1985

Summary

Extent:

49.80 Cassettes

49.80 linear feet (109 archives boxes, 49 oversize folders)

Language:

English.

Preferred citation:

Preferred Citation

Jerome Rothenberg Papers, MSS 0010. Mandeville Special Collections Library, UCSD.

Background

Scope and content:

SCOPE AND CONTENTAccessions Processed in 1990

The Jerome Rothenberg Papers primarily document Rothenberg's writing and editorial work. There are also materials relating to his teaching, along with his extensive correspondence with people involved in comtemporary art and literature. A small group of personal and family materials is also included. Although the collection contains some materials from earlier periods, the bulk of the papers date from the late 1960s through the 1980s. The collection is arranged in seven series: 1) Biographical Materials, 2) Correspondence, 3) Writings, 4) Anthologies Edited by Rothenberg, 5) Journals and Publications Edited by Rothenberg, 6) Writings of Others, and 7) Subject Files.

SERIES 1: BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS include newspaper clippings about Rothenberg, family materials (including family correspondence), and personal memorabilia.

SERIES 2: CORRESPONDENCE

The CORRESPONDENCE, which is extensive, includes letters to and from people prominent in contemporary art and literature. The series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Correspondence with people represented by less than three items is filed in miscellaneous files under the appropriate letter of the alphabet. Some correspondence regarding Rothenberg's publications or editorial work can be found in other series. Prominent correspondents include: Paul Blackburn, including personal and professional letters regarding The Nation; Robert Creeley, including letters to Rothenberg and copies of Rothenberg's replies, some letters relating to sound and image in poetry; Diane Di Prima, represented by a small number of personal letters; George Economou, including personal and professional correspondence; Barbara Einzig, correspondence concerning her poems; Clayton Eshleman, including some personal correspondence; Lawrence Ferlinghetti, correspondence concerning translations; Allen Ginsberg, represented by a small group of letters; Thom Gunn, correspondence concerning publication of poems; a small group of letters from David Ignatow; Robert Kelly, including early correspondence concerning his poems, and later personal correspondence; Denise Levertov, correspondence concerning her poems; Jackson Mac Low, correspondence concerning the publication of his poetry; Steve McCaffery, correspondence concerning poems and readings; bp nichol, a small group of letters; George Oppen, concerning his poems and comments on Revolution of the Word; Ron Silliman, concerning poems and Alcheringa; Gary Snyder, correspondence regarding ethnopoetics; Nathaniel Tarn; Diane Wakoski; and Louis Zukofsky, correspondence concerning poems and writings of others.

SERIES 3: WRITINGS

The series WRITINGS is subdivided into Early Writings, OriginalPoetry, Poetry Readings and Other Oral Presentations, Translations, Prefaces and Introductions, Essays and Criticism, Periodical Contributions, and Notebooks. Within each subseries, works are arranged in approximate chronological order. Included are manuscripts, typescripts, notes, and correspondence. Of interest in the Early Writings are some of Rothenberg's dramatic works. The subseries Original Poetry is wide-ranging in scope and includes business correspondence regarding the publication of individual works, early drafts, typescripts, and notes. Almost all of Rothenberg's published books of poetry are represented here. The materials for Seneca Journal include background and source material used by Rothenberg.

SERIES 4: ANTHOLOGIES EDITED BY ROTHENBERG

The series ANTHOLOGIES contains materials relating to all of the anthologies edited by Rothenberg. Files for each work are extensive. Included is manuscript material, early versions, final versions, source materials, and many notes. Materials for Big Jewish Book include typescripts by contributors with accompanying correspondence.

SERIES 5: JOURNALS AND PUBLICATIONS EDITED BY ROTHENBERG

Within the series JOURNALS AND PUBLICATIONS EDITED BY ROTHENBERG can be found manuscripts and typescripts edited or published by Rothernberg for various journals. Included are a wide range of production materials, including notes, art work, paste-ups, and correspondence.

SERIES 6: WRITINGS OF OTHERS

The WRITINGS OF OTHERS contains mostly typescripts (original, carbon, or photocopied) of poems by other writers. Included are works by Paul Blackburn, Diane Di Prima, George Economou, and Clayton Eshleman.

SERIES 7: SUBJECT FILES

The last series, SUBJECT FILES, includes materials generated by Rothenberg in his various teaching posts. Also included are materials relating to conferences, symposia, and transcriptions of interviews with Rothenberg. SEPARATION LIST

The materials listed below have been separated to other collections in the UCSD Library. For information on the disposition of individual items, contact the Manuscripts Librarian.

_____________

MONOGRAPHS

August Sky, Gino. The Ball Tournament Specialist, 1973 Boyd, Melba Joyce. Thirteen Frozen Flamingoes, n.d. Brown, Rebecca. 3-Way Split, 1978 Bruchac, Joe. Postcards: Monument for a Blown-Down Moment, 1980 Burnham, Linda Frye. Heartland Drive-In Coke, 1981 Burns, Diane. Riding the One-Eyed Ford, 1981 Butcher, Grace. The Bright-Colored Dark, 1966 Corr, Michael and No, Murusaki. Garden Draft, 1980 Cuneo, Pablo. Bronka Stooler Boo Boo Boo, 1984D'Alessandro, Nicolo. A Meeting with Nicolo D'Alessandro and Nat Scammaccu, 1977 Del Bourgo, David. Fairfax and Other Poems, 1985 Eulert, Don. Outposts: Letters and Poems of Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley, 1870-1917, 1978 Gach, Gary. Offices, 1984 Gilbert, Gerry. A Call, 1979 Greenberg, Alvin. The Small Waves, 1965 Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices, 1979 Holman, Bob. Tear To Open (This This This This), 1979 Kotker, Zane. White Rising, 1981 Leed, Jacob. Poems of Jacob Leed, 1966 Levendosky, Charley. Aspects of the Vertical, 1978 Maloney, Dennis. Matsua -A Poem From Pine Hut, 1980 Mariani, Paul. Crossing Cocytus, 1982 Mariani, Paul and Murphy, George. Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, 1984 Martinson, David. Shemay, the Bird in the Sugarbush, 1975 Middleton, Christopher. Wooden Dog, 1981 Morningstar, Ramon Sender. Zero Weather, 1980 Nathanson, Tenney. The Book of Death, 1975 Nelson, Sharon H., Quarterbuck 6 Delta Canada, n.d. Newth, Rebecca. Find the Lamb, 1983 Noel, Bernard. Mille Fois Dedans, 1979 Patterson, Raymond R., For K.L., 1980 Ragostu, Ray. Sherds, 1982 Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred, 1969 Rothenberg, Jerome and Quasha, George. America a Prophecy, 1973 (publisher's edition) Sanfield, Steve. Water Before and Water After, 1974 Sherman, William D. Heart Attack and Spanish Songs Snyder, Gary. Poem for/from Lew, 1980 Tedlock, Dennis. Popol Vuh, A Mayan Book of Myth and History, 1985

SERIALS

Akwesasne Notes Vol. 17, #1, Midwinter 1985 American Book Review Vol. 1, #5 thru Vol. 4, #3, Vol. 7, #2 thru Vol. 8, #1, 1978-1982, 1985 As Is Times Vol. 1, Issue IX, 6-29-76 Atticus Review #6, 8, August 1984, Spring 1985 Aux Hommes, n.d. B.G. Monthly Vol. 5, #1, March 1980 Balungan Vol. 1, #1, June 1984 Benzene #5, 6, 1982 Bezoar Vol 1, #1 thru Vol 21, #4, 1975-1981 Branch Redd Review #3, 1979 Coda: Poets and Writers Newsletter Vol. 2-13, 1975-1985 Contact II Vol. 1-7, 1977-1985 Crow #2, Sept. 1985 Cultural Survival Inc. Newsletter Vol. 5, #3, Summer 1981 Dispatch Vol. 1, #1-8, 1978 Ear Magazine of New Music Vol. 2, #3 thru Vol. 10. #2 Four Changes, n.d. Franklin Furnace Vol. 1, #5 (1981), Vol. 2 #1, n.d. Giants Play Well in the Drizzle #3-9, 11, 1983-1985, 1986 Intersection Newsletter Vol. 10, #2, Spring 1980 Ironwood #23, 24, Vol 12, #1,2, Spring, Fall 1984 Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Vol. 7, #1-4 Kaldron #9-19, 1979-1985 Kyoto Review #8, Summer 1976 Micromegas Vol. VIII, #1, 1978 Multiples Six Winter 1985 Musics #15-17, 1977-1978 New Boston Review Vol. 5 #2-4, June-July 1980 Nurse's Hipflask Vol. 1, #2,3 Oeil de Golem, Journal du Fantastique, 1977 Only Prose, July 1977 O'Pen Extra, n.d. Paris Exiles #2, 1985 Parnasus, Poetry in Review Fall/Winter 1984 Partisan Review/50th Anniversary. Vol. LI, 1984 Poetry East #13 and 14, Spring/Summer 1984 Poetry Flash #74-153, 1979-1985 Poetry News #5, 16, Feb. 1981, Jan. 1982 Poetry Project Newsletter #26-117, 1975-1985 Polyphonix #5, 1983 Primary Writing #1, 1983 Primer #3, June 1976 Reservation Times, 1985 River Styx #17, 1985 Rolling Stock #10, 1985 Sanders Report #1-2, 1982-1983 Science Vol. 222, #4630, Dec. 23, 1983 Small Press Review Vol. 8, #10, Oct. 1976 Spar #1, 10, October 1981, July 1982 Straits Vol. 1, #1-5 thru Vol. 3, 1982-1984 Telescope Vol. 3, # 3, Fall 1984 Vortex, 1983 Walt Whitman Quarterly Review Vol. 1, #3, Dec. 1983 Zyzzyva Vol. 1 # 2, Summer 1985 # Magazine #16, July 1980

Accessions Processed in 1990

SERIES 1: BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS include newspaper clippings about Rothenberg, family materials (including family correspondence), and personal memorabilia.

SERIES 2: CORRESPONDENCE

SERIES 3: WRITINGS

SERIES 4: ANTHOLOGIES EDITED BY ROTHENBERG

SERIES 5: JOURNALS AND PUBLICATIONS EDITED BY ROTHENBERG

SERIES 6: WRITINGS OF OTHERS

SERIES 7: SUBJECT FILES

The materials listed below have been separated to other collections in the UCSD Library. For information on the disposition of individual items, contact the Manuscripts Librarian.

_____________

MONOGRAPHS

SERIALS

Biographical / historical:

BIOGRAPHY

Jerome Rothenberg was born in New York City in 1931, the son of Morris and Estelle Lichtenstien Rothenberg. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1952 and the following year received a Master's Degree in Literature from the University of Michigan. He spent the years 1953-1955 in the U.S. Army, stationed in Mainz, Germany, and returned for further graduate studies at Columbia University from 1956 to 1959.

Rothenberg's first published work, a group of translations from the German, appeared in the Winter 1957 issue of The Hudson Review. In 1958 Lawrence Ferlinghetti asked Rothenberg to translate a collection of postwar German poetry, which City Lights Books published in 1959 as New Young German Poets. This work marked the first appearance in English of such poets as Paul Celan, Gunter Grass, and Ingeborg Bachman.

In 1958 Rothenberg founded Hawk's Well Press, which published early works by Robert Kelly, Diane Wakoski, Armand Schwerner, and Rochelle Owens, as well as Rothenberg's first book of poems, White Sun Black Sun. As an adjunct to these activities, Rothenberg edited the magazine Poems from the Floating World, which included new works by poets Jackson Mac Low, Robert Bly, Denise Levertov, Paul Blackburn, Gary Snyder, and Robert Duncan. The magazine was superseded in 1965 by Some/Thing, co-edited with David Antin.

Rothenberg's works during this period reflect his experimentation with image in White Sun Black Sun (1960) and attempts at thematic enlargement in The Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi (1962) to experiments with silences and disjunctions in Sightings (1964) to further explorations of alternate poetic structures, uses of found poetry and collage, development of forms suggested by Gertrude Stein's work, experiments with dialogue and narrative that mark The Gorky Poems (1966), Conversations (1968), and Poems 1964-1967. These concerns and the connections between them were presented in Rothenberg's next work, Poems for the Game of Silence (1970).

Rothenberg's concern for the relationship between "primitive" and modern poetry led to the development of an anthology of primitive and archaic poetry, Technicians of the Sacred (1968). This work attempted to redefine the range of primitive poetry, presenting not only words of songs, but picture poems, sound poetry, naming poems, dreams and visions and scenarios of ritual-events. With the completion of this work, Rothenberg directed his attention to ethnopoetics and began a study of Senecan Indian songs at the the Allegheny Reservation in Steamburg, New York.

In 1968 Rothenberg received a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation in Anthropological Research to conduct a two-part experiment in the translation of American Indian poetry. The project involved a collaborative translation between Rothenberg and Seneca songmen and the translation of a series of Navajo horse-blessing songs. In this effort, Rothenberg began to develop an approach he termed "total translation," meaning that he accounted in the English version for every element in the original language, including the so-called "meaningless" vocables, word distortions and redundancies. This close study and involvement with American Indian poetry and ritual promoted the development of Rothenberg's next anthology, Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (1972).

Rothenberg's interest in American Indian and other tribal/oral poetries led to the development of a magazine, Alcheringa, the first periodical devoted exclusively to ethnopoetics which he co-edited with Dennis Tedlock from 1970-1976. Concurrent with this interest, Rothenberg began exploring his own ancestral themes and the lost world of Jewish Poland in a series of poems which culminated in A Book of Testimony (1971), Esther K. Comes to America (1973), and Poland/1931 (1974).

With George Quasha, Rothenberg published America A Prophecy in 1974. The intent of this anthology was to redefine the past and present of American poetry over an expanse of time and cultures. Also in that year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1976 a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1978 Rothenberg published A Big Jewish Book: Poems and Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to the Present. Co-edited with Harris Lenowitz and Charles Doria, this volume broke new ground in the fields of poetry and history. The book provides a unique history/anthology of Jewish consciousness in the form of poetry and oral traditions. For the book, Rothenberg drew on both sacred and secular sources, with the link between them emphasizing the poetic/visionary continuum and the mystical and magical side of the Jewish tradition. To document the entire range of the Jewish poetry tradition, Rothenberg divided the book into three sections which explore the mythic, historic, and poetic themes of Jewish poetry. Many of the works contained were newly translated or uncovered.

Rothenberg's next major anthology, Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward An Ethnopoetics, co-edited with Diane Rothenberg, appeared in 1983. This book traces an ongoing course of work and thought on poetry and culture that has influenced the art of modern times. Symposium follows the concept of ethnopoetics from the writings of predecessors such as Vico, Blake, Thoreau, and Tzara to more recent essays and manifestos by poets and social thinkers, including Olson, Eliade, Snyder, and Baraka. The work is unique in its vision and scope, addressing both poetics and politics.

Since 1960, Rothenberg has served as an instructor at various colleges and universities, including: the City College of New York (1960-1961); the Mannes College of Music, New York City (1961-1970); the University of California, San Diego (Regents' Professor, 1971); the New School for Social Research (1971-1972); the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (1974-1976); San Diego State University (1976-1977); the University of California, San Diego (1977-1985); SUNY Albany (Writer in Residence, 1986); SUNY Binghampton (1986-1988); and the University of California, San Diego (1988-).

Finally, Rothenberg has translated work by Paul Celan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Eugen Gomringer, Rolf Hochhuth, Garcia Lorca, Kurt Schwitters and many other European writers into English. In 1968 Rothenberg received a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant for the experimental translation of American Indian poetry. Rothenberg's own selected poetry, Poems for the Game of Silence, has appeared in French, Swedish, and Flemish/Dutch editions, and his work has been extensively translated into Spanish, Dutch, Italian, German, Serbian, and Finnish.

Jerry's Life
Date	Event
1931	Born
1955	MA from Wisconsin
1962	Establishes Hawk's Well Press with David Antin Publishes Revolution of the Work Son Matthew born.

Editors: Donald Allen

Collaborators

Donald Allen
Don Byrd
Roy Harvey Pearce

Thus runs a life.

Physical location:

For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.

Access and use

Preferred citation:

Preferred Citation

Jerome Rothenberg Papers, MSS 0010. Mandeville Special Collections Library, UCSD.

Location of this collection:: Lyrasis Special Collections

Lyrasis Library

3390 Park Avenue

New York

NY

10024

USA

Contact:: collections@lyrasis.org

Collection