The Hand of the Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript

by Rodney Phillips, Susan Benesch, Kenneth Benson, and Barbara Bergeron
Essays by Dana Gioia

Rizzoli International Publications; 368 pages, over 300 black-and-white illustrations; $40.00

Available at bookstores nationwide and at The New York Public Library's Library Shop.

List of Poets Included in the Volume

John Keats: A Sample Entry

"I think what poets love most is the labor of poetry itself, that deeply absorbed work. This collection brings it alive like nothing I've seen." -- Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate

Inspired by an enormously successful exhibition organized by The New York Public Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The Hand of the Poet provides a personal, intimate connection with poetry and its creation. One hundred poets, ranging from John Donne and William Blake to Stanley Kunitz and Julia Alvarez, are represented by biographical sketches, illustrations (all from the collections of The New York Public Library), and poetry excerpts. Emphasis is on poetry-as-process, with many poems shown in early -- sometimes wonderfully messy -- drafts; some of these poems would undergo extensive revision before, and even sometimes after, their first appearance in print.

The personal side of poets and poetry is shown through manuscripts of a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop for Robert Lowell, and the poem he wrote for her in response; a typescript of a poem Muriel Rukeyser wrote for her son, accompanied by a snapshot of the poet with the newborn child; photos of Robert Lowell with his daughter, Randall Jarrell with the cat to whom he gave his wartime meat rations, Donald Justice (who abandoned a music career for one in poetry) at the piano, and James Schuyler in his poetically cluttered Chelsea Hotel apartment. Also illustrated is an assortment of realia from the Berg Collection: a pencil made by Henry David Thoreau in his family's pencil factory, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's slippers and lorgnette, a wild flower pressed by Edward Thomas into a manuscript notebook, and poet and civil servant Humbert Wolfe's CBE medal.

In addition, the volume includes essays by poet Dana Gioia about the value of literary manuscripts and the history of the Berg Collection, and a bibliographical essay by Rodney Phillips offering suggestions for further reading.

The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, one of the world's most celebrated collections of rare books and manuscripts, was presented to The New York Public Library in 1940 by Dr. Albert A. Berg, a well-known New York surgeon, in memory of his brother, Dr. Henry W. Berg. The collection covers the entire range of English and American Literature, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection is rich in both manuscripts and first editions of Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Jack Kerouac, among many others. Among its treasures are the typescript of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with Ezra Pound's handwritten changes, and the holograph novels, diaries, and letters of Virginia Woolf. Recent additions include the papers of Vladimir Nabokov.

Rodney Phillips is Curator of the Berg Collection of English and American Literature.
Susan Benesch and Kenneth Benson are New York-based freelance writers. Barbara Bergeron is an editor in the Publications Office of The New York Public Library.

B. Bergeron, 5/97