Papers of John Taggart, a contemporary American poet known for his formal and prosodic innovations. The collection contains manuscripts and typescripts of Taggart's published and unpublished poetry, juvenilia from the 1960s and 70s, fiction, and essays devoted to the work of individual artists such as George Oppen and Edward Hopper as well as collective movements such as the Objectivist poets. The collection also contains many of his personal journals, notebooks, and loose notecards, as well as ongoing correspondence with writers, artists, and editors such as Theodore Enslin and Susan Howe.

John Taggart was born in 1942 in Guthrie Center, Iowa. He graduated with honors in 1965 from Earlham College in Indiana, earning a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy. In 1966 he received a M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Chicago, and in 1974 he completed a Ph.D. in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Syracuse University. His dissertation, titled "Intending a Solid Object: A Study in Objectivist Poetics," was one of the first extended discussions of the compositional strategies informing the work of poets Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen. Though the work has never been published as a monograph, revised sections of it have appeared in Louis Zukofsky: Man and Poet, edited by Carroll F. Terrell (National Poetry Foundation, 1979) and Credences: Journal of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics (nos. 2-3 Fall/Winter, 1982).

29.6 Linear feet (69 archives boxes, 1 records carton and 2 oversized folders)

Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.

The reel-to-reel audio tape in box 23 is restricted. Researchers must request a user copy be produced.