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Register of the Rae Armantrout Papers
MSS 699
MSS 699
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Table of contents
Title: Rae Armantrout Papers
Identifier/Call Number: MSS 699
Contributing Institution:
Mandeville Special Collections Library
La Jolla, California 92093-0175
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
10.2 Linear feet
23 archives boxes and 2 oversize folders
Date (inclusive): 1954-2009
Abstract: Papers of Rae Armantrout, American poet and teacher. The papers primarily document Armantrout's writing, including typescripts
of individual poems and published manuscripts, her personal journals, as well as an extensive amount of correspondence with
other American poets. The collection also includes teaching materials and notebooks from literature courses Armantrout taught
at UCSD between 2000 and 2008. In addition, the papers contain promotional materials from poetry readings and conferences,
as well as a small amount of biographical material.
creator:
Armantrout, Rae, 1947-
Rae Armantrout Papers, MSS 699. Mandeville Special Collections Library, UCSD.
Not Available
Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.
Scope and Contents of Collection
The Rae Armantrout Papers include materials documenting her work as a poet and teacher. The collection includes personal and
professional correspondence, personal journals, and typescript drafts of poems and manuscripts. The collection also contains
notebooks and lecture notes from literature courses taught by Armantrout from 2000 through 2008. Although the materials date
from 1954 through 2009, the bulk of the collection dates from 2001 through 2008. The papers are arranged in five series: 1)
CORRESPONDENCE, 2) WRITINGS BY ARMANTROUT, 3) JOURNALS, 4)TEACHING MATERIALS, and 5) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS.
SERIES 1: CORRESPONDENCE
The CORRESPONDENCE series, arranged alphabetically, contains letters and emails from Fanny Howe, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman,
and other poets and literary editors regarding Armantrout's poetry. Materials in this series also include a small amount of
correspondence between Armantrout and various publishers regarding her books of collected poetry, as well as individual published
poems.
SERIES 2: WRITINGS BY ARMANTROUT
The WRITINGS BY ARMANTROUT series is arranged in three subseries: A) Individual Poems, B) Collected Poems, and C) Prose.
A) The Individual Poems subseries includes individual poems written by Armantrout, as well as uncollected published poetry
that appeared in
The New Yorker and
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
B) The Collected Poems subseries contains typescript drafts of individual poems written by Armantrout for her publications
Pretext (2001),
Veil (2001),
Up to Speed (2004),
Next Life (2007) and
Versed (2009). This subseries also contains published criticisms and reviews of some of Armantrout's later writings. Items in this
subseries are arranged in chronological order.
C) The third subseries, Prose, includes typescript drafts of essays written by Armantrout, including an essay about fellow
Language Poet Lyn Hejinian. This series is arranged in alphabetical order.
SERIES 3: JOURNALS
The JOURNALS series includes 145 personal journals kept by Armantrout from 1971 through 2009. The journals include drafts
of poems and personal entries. This series is arranged in chronological order.
SERIES 4: TEACHING MATERIALS
The TEACHING MATERIALS series is arranged in two subseries: A) Syllabi and Lecture Notes, and B) Notebooks.
A) The Syllabi and Lecture Notes subseries includes Armantrout's course notes, outlines, and final exam keys from literature
courses she taught at UCSD from 2000 to 2008. This subseries is arranged in alphabetical order.
B) The Notebooks subseries contains spiral bound notebooks with course and lecture notes from 2000 through 2008, and are arranged
in chronological order.
SERIES 5: MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS
The final series in the collection, MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS, contains Armantrout's early poems and artwork from the mid-1950s.
This series also contains a transcript from Stephen Burt and Linnea Odgen's interview with Armantrout about her writing process,
and flyers and typescripts drafts of introductions from poetry readings and performances by Armantrout in the 1990s through
2009.
Rae Armantrout was born on April 12, 1947, in Vallejo, California, and grew up in San Diego. Armantrout studied literature
at UC Berkeley, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1970. She later received her master's degree in creative writing
from San Francisco State University in 1975. Armantrout is one of the founding members of the West Coast "Language Poetry"
movements and worked with other Language poets including Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, and Lyn Hejinian. Armantrout and her
husband Chuck Korkegien returned to San Diego in the early 1980s.
Armantrout's first publication was in 1978, entitled
Extremities, followed by nine other books of poetry, including
Made to Seem (1995),
Veil (2001),
Up to Speed (2004),
Next Life (2007), and
Versed (2009). Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies including
American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry,
Language Poetries,
The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and
The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2008.
Armantrout has been a finalist for the PEN USA Award in 2001 and 2004, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry, as well as the
2008 winner of the Frederick Bock Poetry Prize. She is one of ten poets currently working on the project
The Grand Piano: An Experiment In Collective Autobiography, which is a collaboration by ten writers identified with the rise of Language Poetry in San Francisco. Writing on the volumes
began in 1998, with the first volume (of a proposed ten) being published in November 2006. For the past twenty years, Armantrout
has taught in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Armantrout, Rae, 1947- -- Archives
Bernstein, Charles, 1950-
Hejinian, Lyn
Howe, Fanny
Howe, Susan, 1937-
Myles, Eileen
Rothenberg, Jerome, 1931-
Silliman, Ronald, 1946-
American poetry--20th century
Women poets--United States