Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Marshall (Jack) papers
M2703
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Jack Marshall papers
source:
Eureka Books
Identifier/Call Number: M2703
Physical Description:
10.5 Linear Feet
(23 manuscript boxes and 4 half manuscript boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1963-2021
Abstract: Correspondence and writings of American poet Jack Marshall spanning the latter half of the twentieth century.
Open for research. Note that material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Audiovisual materials
are not available in original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.
Box 27 is closed for research until Jack Marshall's death.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased, 2021. Accessions 2021-217 and 2022-059
Collection is organized into seven series: 1. Correspondence; 2. Books: Drafts, Proofs, Galleys' 3. Poetry; 4. Non-poetry
Writings; 5. Reviews and Contributions; 6. Notebooks; 7. Miscellany
The child of an Iraqi-Jewish father and Syrian-Jewish mother, Jack Marshall grew up in an Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jewish home–an
experience he wrote about in his memoir From Baghdad to Brooklyn: Growing Up in a Jewish-Arabic Family in Midcentury America
(Coffee House Press, 2005). After graduating from Brooklyn College, where he studied literature, Marshall took a series of
jobs, including working on a Norwegian merchant ship, managing a clothing store, and working as a longshoreman in the late
1950s. Marshall was active in the Lower East Side poetry scene centered around the 10th Street Coffee House in the first part
of the 1960s. He published his first volume of poetry, The Darkest Continent, in 1967.
In the late 1960s, Marshall moved to San Francisco, where he became active in the Bay Area poetry scene. He is known for narrative
poetry that makes use of highly concentrated imagery to thwart narrative closure in favor of open-endedness. Marshall's poetry
explores themes of identity and belonging, drawing from influences including the Persian poet Rumi, the Objectivists of the
1930s, the Black Mountain school of the 1950s, and the Beat poets of the 1950s and 1960s. The poetic form Marshall has developed
affords him a way of exploring the tensions shaping his own experience of living as "a minority within a larger minority."
Over the course of a career that has spanned sixty years, Marshall has published over a dozen volumes of poetry, including
a the book-length poem Floats (1971), the collaboration Surviving in America (1971) with Arab-American poet Sam Hamod and
Finnish-American poet Anselm Hollo, Arriving on the Playing Fields of Paradise (1984), and Arabian Nights (1986).
In 1993 Marshall published Sesame, which departed from the more narrative forms of his earlier works. In Sesame, Marshall
deployed vivid imagery to disrupt the narrative flow of the poems and to explore the open, indeterminate nature of identity–most
specifically his own identity as a Mizrahi Jew. Sesame received a PEN West Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award
for poetry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Marshall's work turned toward more political themes in works like Millennium
Fever (1996), in which he took up themes of environmental collapse, and The Steel Veil (2008), in which he engaged with the
US occupation of his father's Iraqi homeland. In addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for
From Baghdad to Brooklyn, Marshall has received two PEN West Award, two Bay Area Book Reviewers rewards, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 2008. During his career Marshall also taught at several writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop,
California Western College in San Diego, and San Francisco State University.
[identification of item], Jack Marshall Papers (M2703). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries,
Stanford, Calif.
Marshall had quite a few cats, so there is a significant amount of cat hair mixed in with the papers. Be cautious if you have
allergies!
The collection consists of correspondence, both handwritten and email printouts, about poetry spanning from the 1960s to the
2010s. Letters are mostly from poets and publishers, including many based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drafts of Marshall's
books, poems, and prose make up most of the remainder of the collection. Materials about his books date from the 1990s and
2000s, while the poems and prose cover that period and earlier. Marshall's notebooks and looseleaf notes are also included.
Manuscripts dominate the collection, although there are some photographs and A/V materials.
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.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Poets, American
American poetry -- Jewish authors
Mizrahi authors
American poetry -- 20th century.
Eureka Books
Marshall, Jack