A Note on the William Carlos Williams Collection at The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Abstract

A Note on the William Carlos Williams Collection at The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York James Maynard, Associate Curator When Charles David Abbott, professor of English and director of the university libraries, founded the Poetry Collection in the mid-1930s at what was then the University of Buffalo, he set out to create for future scholars an exhaustive collection of modern poetry. Abbott began by collecting first editions of twentieth-century Anglophone poetry and soon thereafter expanded his acquisitions to include little magazines and—an act of genuine foresight—the manuscripts, or what he liked to call the "worksheets," of American and English poets. One of the first poets Abbott solicited was William Carlos Williams. In a letter dated 8 December 1936, he asked the poet to consider donating an example of his work in manuscript. Williams replied that at the time he didn't have anything on hand, having discarded most of his drafts as they were copied, but agreed to send materials in the future. By May of 1940 he was unpacking surviving items from his attic in Rutherford, New Jersey and sending them to Buffalo. Along the way Abbott and Williams formed a personal relationship that would last until Abbott's death in 1961. Over the years nearly 200 items of correspondence passed from the Williams family to the Abbotts. And, as recounted in his Autobiography, Williams and his wife stayed on several occasions as personal guests at the Gratwick estate, which was owned by the family of Abbott's wife, Theresa Gratwick Abbott. Williams's experiences at the Gratwick estate, and in particular its significance for his writing, is discussed in detail in Emily Mitchell Wallace's essay "Musing in the Highlands and Valleys: The Poetry of Gratwick Farm," published in the Spring 1982 issue of the William Carlos Williams Review. [End Page 205] Over seventy-five years later, the Poetry Collection is the library of record for twentieth- and now twenty-first-century poetry in English and holds one of the world's largest collections of poetry first editions, little magazines, broadsides, anthologies, and other publications; more than 150 archives and manuscript collections from a wide range of poets, presses, magazines, and organizations; and substantial collections of artwork, audio recordings, mail art, visual and concrete poetry, photographs, and zines. Today, the Collection continues its original mission of acquiring the publications and papers from writers at both the center and the margins of poetic culture, and serves as an active research center for all facets of modern and contemporary poetry. Finding its place alongside the papers of such writers as James Joyce, Robert Graves, and Wyndham Lewis, the William Carlos Williams Collection is to this day one of the premier collections in the Poetry Collection. Totaling approximately 20,000 pages, the Williams Collection contains the manuscripts for 416 individual poems, 128 items of creative prose including several drafts for the plays A Dream of Love (1948) and Many Loves (1942), and 159 items of critical prose; notebooks; manuscript arrangements for The Wedge (1944) and other works; the working papers for Books I and II of Paterson; nearly 1,200 letters of Williams's correspondence from and in some cases to individuals such as Charles Abbott, James Laughlin, Robert McAlmon, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Alva Turner, Louis Zukofsky, and many others; and other miscellaneous items. In 1982 Williams's letters to his son William Eric Williams were added to the collection. Supplementing these archival materials are Williams's desk and typewriter and the Poetry Collection's complete set of first editions of Williams's books and virtually every book of Williams criticism. Most of these materials are described in detail in Neil Baldwin and Steven L. Meyers's The Manuscripts and Letters of William Carlos Williams in the Poetry Collection of The Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo: A Descriptive Catalogue (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978), which is still the collection's primary finding aid. Comprising over 22 linear feet of material, the Williams Collection is arranged in thirteen series: Series I. Poems—Series II. Creative prose—Series III. Critical prose—Series IV...