Stephanie Anderson is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Chicago and the recipient of a 2013 Strochlitz Travel Grant. Travel grants are awarded bi-annually to scholars and students to support their travel to and research in the Dodd Research Center’s Archives and Special Collections. 

These days, when I’m thinking of a friend, I usually toss off a quick text or email.  But a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a postcard image of Robert Burns’s cottage, and I had to send it to my mother, a Burns fan.  The simple act of addressing and sending the postcard reminded me what a joy postcards can be; my mother would know right away why I had sent the card.  Postcards anticipate some sort of response, even if it’s not a written one. In that regard, they are like poems – often understated, yet capable of signifying a great deal; sometimes intended for a particular addressee yet also circulating, exposed, in public. And like poems, their text is not their only means of signifying; it is generally only one component of the entire “message.” 

The postcard’s other marks of distance – foreign stamps, the obtrusive postmark, the image on the front (which, as with the postcard to my mother, may be more “private” than the text on the back, as it can represent a mental placement of the addressee in the sender’s position or thoughts for reasons that an over-hearer/reader may not be able to intuit) – can be just as weighty. In other words, often it is the entire object or one of its components that signifies more than the epistolary text. As Derrida says, “What I prefer, about post cards, is that one does not know what is in front or what is in back, here or there, near or far, the Plato or the Socrates, recto or verso. Nor what is the most important, the picture or the text, and in the text, the message or the caption, or the address.”^[1] The postcard tracks the movement of the sender, and confirms the fact that the other is still in the world.

Members of the group of poets known as the “Second Generation New York School” (active from about 1960 to the present) used postcards as a primary form of communication. The cards were printed en masse to advertise readings; they were handwritten en masse as invites to parties and celebrations. Presses printed individual poems on them to advertise books. For the artist Joe Brainard as well as others, they suited his interest in assemblage and his reclamation of kitsch. He tirelessly sent vast numbers of postcards, such that their saturation became, for their recipients, a form of articulating presence – and as evidenced in a letter from Bill Berkson, Brainard even considered starting a postcard company.^[2] We can assume that for the group, the exchange of postcards can be seen as a form of playful conversation.

At the Dodd Research Center’s Archives and Special Collections this summer, I had the pleasure of looking through archives of several “Second Generation New York School” participants, including Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, and Larry Fagin. A chapter of my dissertation examines the epistolarity of Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets, and so I was very excited to come upon letters and postcards throughout these archives.

Berrigan wasn’t a prolific letter writer, but he did like postcards quite a lot; at the time of his death in 1983 he was working on a series of poems written on postcards. The poet and Berrigan’s widow Alice Notley reports that though these blank postcards were printed by the Alternative Press, they were 4½ by 7 inches, distributed in groups of 500, and given to other artists and writers as well.^[3] The appeal of the postcard, Notley suggests, is its materiality; it is a “block”-like unit.^[4] She explains how Berrigan used the postcard:

The postcard poem was a form dominated by the size of the card, though a relatively longer poem could be written on a card if Ted shrank his handwriting. Ted immediately used semi-collaboration as a way into the poems, inducing everyone he knew to write a line or draw an image on a postcard. He later eliminated the names of the “facilitators,” except for the occasional dedication. The poems are often epigrammatic, but are just as likely to be longer; they chronicle, not so explicitly, a difficult year…^[5]

The Bill Berkson papers contain one beautiful example of such a collaborative postcard, which has a “trillium” in the background painted by Notley (the back is empty). According to a note in his papers, Berkson received the postcard in 1983, after Berrigan’s death. The smooth and luscious lines of Notley’s watercolor flower provide an interesting contrast to the card’s text, which begins (after listing the address to situate the card’s production) “I stand in the dock in judgement / literally already condemned, but am / here to be informed…” The second slash is actually present in the text, insinuating that Berrigan conceived of the lines as poetry but perhaps a poetry still in a nascent or draft state.

The remainder of the text goes on to question groupings such as the “Second Generation New York School” tag that I employed above.  Berrigan was at this point seen as central to the “group,” and here he name-drops other artists (Lorenzo Thomas and Kathy Acker) to poke fun at his placement vis-à-vis the public perception of the “group,” suggesting that aligning his own work with that of Lorenzo Thomas and Kathy Acker is a mistake. One aspect of their work’s reception, he says, is its ability to “provoke angry / exchanges + bloody fist fights,” an end his work cannot accomplish. He will, instead, simply attempt to communicate: “…so, what I am / going to do is talk, which is what I do plus read / my poems.” His “one word of advice” to Berkson, scrawled almost illegibly in the upper right-hand corner, is “Duck,” perhaps partially intended to pun on predictability. The image of the flower contains an upward trajectory in its lines, some of which guide the eye toward this right-hand corner, but semantics of the word hiding there suggest the opposite movement. “Duck,” as a verb: keep your head down, keep moving, don’t get hit by the incoming “bloody fist[s].”

I don’t take this statement to be apolitical, or against aesthetic provocation; I read it instead as a wariness of generalizing about groups and group labels. It is desirable to be included – or to have others included with you – in such grouping, even with the tongue-in-cheek tone (“I am pleased and flattered / to be joined in such noble / company,” he writes). But as in a boxing match, one can only avoid being knocked out (critically pigeon-holed and labeled, we might say) by remaining unpredictable, both in aesthetics and in perceived group affiliations. Hand-delivered to Berkson, it has a specific addressee, yet the suggestions Berrigan makes about aesthetic groupings seems directed toward a larger audience. Of course, he couldn’t have anticipated that 30 years later, a budding scholar would be thumbing through his correspondence looking for clues about his work and milieu – yet the postcard felt like it was intended to be overread by a recipient exactly like myself, in order to complicate and nuance conceptions of poetic form and coterie labeling

Carey MacDonald is an undergraduate Anthropology major and writing intern. This is the final post in Carey’s blog series Through the Lens of an Anthropologist, in which she analyzes artifacts found in the collections of Archives and Special Collections.

The School of Home Economics, which served as the foundation for the future School of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut, educated university students, particularly women, in the skills of sewing, cooking, and generalized homemaking. The Clothing, Textiles, and Related Art major (CTRA) within the School of Home Economics specialized in clothing, dress, and costume design and construction. A small collection of Home Economics dresses found in the Archives contains several dresses from 1968, two of which are of particular interest because of their especially professional design.

The first is an orange and white shift dress made of thick corduroy. Its loosely sewn label provides us with the following information, “Designer Sportswear from Lord and Taylor, California Summer, 1968. Orange and white summer shift.” This would suggest that the dress was not made by a student but was produced by the department store, Lord and Taylor. Yet this is particularly confounding because Curator for Multimedia Collections Kristin Eshelman believes that the dress looks handmade. It is hard to determine whether this dress was only used in the classroom for students to model their work after or if it was actually produced in the classroom by a student.

This dress does provide some concrete evidence for its context: handwritten on the label is “E Hotte.” According to The University of Connecticut Bulletin 1968-69 General Catalog, Mrs. Eleanor Hotte was an associate professor for the Clothing, Textiles, and Related Art major within the School of Home Economics. She taught a semester-long, two-credit course in Costume Design which, according to the course catalog, provided students with the “opportunity to develop originality in the design of costumes and to appreciate line, color, and texture in relation to the human figure.” Interestingly, going back just one year to the catalog for the academic year of 1967-68, Eleanor Hotte was Eleanor Boettke. She taught a course called Research Problems with Mr. Hotte for at least that year, and it seems that by a year later she was married and had taken his name. This dress was therefore used in some fashion in one of Mrs. Hotte’s classes, most likely for Costume Design or another class called Dress Design.

Another 1968 dress found in the collection is of a more fanciful stock; its label states, “Woman’s evening gown w/ palazzo pants is of turquoise polyester w/rhinestone trim at neck & midriff.” This flashy gown with widely flared palazzo pants was given as a gift, as the label also shows, “Gift: Mrs. Mary Majnich.” It is possible that a student gave this dress to Mrs. Majnich or that Mrs. Majnich gave this dress to university students. Since its label is of the same style as the shift dress’s label, it is probable that both dresses had the same, original context; they were either given to the university for students to use in class or were created by students at the university.

Ultimately, when it was in existence, the School of Home Economics was clearly seriously invested in training students to be skilled in clothing design and homemaking. Our recent cultural shift away from valuing home economics as a field of study is represented in the transformation of the School of Home Economics into the wider-in-scope School of Human Development and Family Studies here at the University of Connecticut.

Carey MacDonald, writing intern

Carey MacDonald is an undergraduate Anthropology major and writing intern. In her blog series Through the Lens of an Anthropologist, Carey analyzes artifacts found in the collections of Archives and Special Collections.

The Beat poets characterized themselves as non-conformists who dismissed the growing materialism of 1950s American society in order to lead a freer, more spontaneous lifestyle. The poetry of Jack Kerouac reflects the Beat ethos, and it is within the collection of spoken word records that we find several LP albums on which Kerouac recites his own poetry to the tune of music.

Poetry for the Beat Generation is the result of the 1959 collaboration of Jack Kerouac and composer Steve Allen under New York’s Hanover-Signature Record Corporation. According to the LP’s jacket, this recording session lasted only an hour, as decided by both Kerouac and Allen who felt that this first, improvised recording sufficed – and it certainly did. Their unusual collaboration illustrates through words and music the curious life of the nonconforming individual. In “October In The Railroad Earth” Kerouac warbles about the many different people he sees in the diverse city of San Francisco. This poem is like Kerouac’s own sociological study: he juxtaposes the rushing commuters with newspapers in hand with the roaming “lost bums” and “Negroes” of the “Railroad Earth.” Kerouac furthers this theme of dualism when he remarks about things as ordinary as the movement of day to night and from sunny, blue sky to deep blue sky with stars.

Despite this thematic duality however, it is apparent that Kerouac does not mean to draw distinctions between the groups of people he observes. Instead he familiarizes himself with all sorts of people, breaks down the social divisions separating them, and lives among them: “Nobody knew – or far from cared – who I was all my life, 3,500 miles from birth, all opened up and at last belonged to me in great America.”

While “October In The Railroad Earth” is comprised of his momentary observations of the world, Kerouac’s recitation makes these observations inherently complex and compelling. The unique combination of his deep Lowell, MA accent with his precise word placement, expressive diction, and comical use of onomatopoeia makes this particularly vivid poem grab the attention of and resonate with the listener. Kerouac also tends to end his phrases with an upward inflection instead of dropping the last word to give pause to his thoughts. This is indicative of the almost never-ending stream of consciousness that runs through his mind, just like what each of us experiences every day.

Steve Allen’s improvised jazz piano accompaniment further enhances the potency of Kerouac’s recitations in that it reinforces the tone of the poem. In the case of “October In The Railroad Earth,” Allen’s rifts become fast and exciting when Kerouac discusses the busy commuters and then mellow out when day becomes night and when Kerouac comments on California’s “end of land sadness.”

“The Sounds of The Universe Coming In My Window” also reflects on an individual’s everyday sensory experiences, such as listening to the humming of aphids and hummingbirds or marveling at the trees outside. Allen’s piano and Kerouac’s alliteration and echo amplify the “sounds of the universe” described in this poem.

The somber piano accompaniment on “I Had A Slouch Hat Too One Time” establishes the wistful tone of Kerouac’s poem in which he laments that perhaps he does not belong with the Ivy League men of New York City who wear slouch hats and Brooks Brothers slacks and ties. Instead, on top of a now whimsical piano melody, he tells a (most likely) fictional tale about consuming drugs in the bathroom of a store in Buffalo, NY and then proceeding to steal a man’s wallet and begin a shoplifting spree. This poem clearly reflects the non-conforming values of the Beats and calls into question the value of the posh lifestyle of the men described in the poem.

Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen’s Poetry for the Beat Generation effortlessly reveals the dissenting ideals of the Beats, and across the span of American history we see a similar pattern of social disdain for the status quo.

Carey MacDonald, writing intern

Celebrate National Poetry Month by exploring today’s poets and poetry available from our friends at the living-breathing heart of the now: poetry portals. These sites bring to the 21st century a tradition of independently curating, collecting and publishing poetry that existed during the mimeograph revolution of the 20th century. Kin to the muscular-yet-short-lived little magazines that thrived in the 1960s and 1970s, they are realms of the extraordinary, offering what the poet John Taggart in Number 1 (1969) of his little magazine Maps, describes as

…Poems [that] are not on the furthermost borders of the avant-garde. They are of the now in the continuum sense of ‘being’ – eyes open, perhaps screaming, but not leaping out of the present, and occasionally, they are of the past as renovated by those open eyes.

Archive of the Now

PennSound

UbuWeb

VerySmallKitchen

April 26, 1968 Student Strike, University of Connecticut

Students’ actions at the University of Connecticut during the Vietnam War era were charged with radical and idealistic electricity. At a time when the student population was smaller, quieter, and only a third of the size that it is today, the on-campus presence of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) helped mobilize individuals who either did or did not associate themselves with the group. One action that took place on campus during this era was the ten-day long demonstration of December 1968. Producers A.H. Perlmutter and Morton Silverstein of National Educational Television captured this demonstration on film and turned it into the 1969 black and white production Diary of a Student Revolution.

The film suggests that the reason for that December’s unrest was that many students were strongly opposed to the principles of the companies conducting job recruitment interviews on campus. One such company was the DOW Chemical Company, the maker of both Saran Wrap and Napalm, a chemical weapon whose rampant usage in the Vietnam War became highly controversial in the U.S. in the late sixties. Students demonstrated against the university’s permission of DOW recruitment by first occupying the office of President Homer D. Babbidge in November 1968. SDS continued to garner support from some students and faculty and called for the student government to join their side on December 8, 2012. This was just the beginning of that December’s ten-day period of unrest.

Although the immediate cause of the December action was students’ opposition to recruiters on campus, interviews with students reveal the underlying moods and motivations advancing the demonstration. One individual stated, “Power, you know, is at the top; it’s held by a corporate elite. And the country is organized to protect the corporate elite.” Another student claimed that “this system cannot be tolerated and must be destroyed.” This severe distrust of American government and industry existed at a time when the Vietnam War was becoming more and more brutal and thus unpopular, and when social and civil rights activists like Abbie Hoffman and Martin Luther King, Jr. were at the forefront of the media.

In response to students’ and SDS’s call for a moratorium on recruiting starting on Tuesday, December 10, 1968, President Babbidge stated in a campus-wide announcement that, after great deliberation, there would be no moratorium on recruiting. Needless to say, that Tuesday saw the height of the action; people demonstrated against Babbidge’s announcement outside an off-campus building where recruiting was taking place. 67 students and faculty who weren’t formally associated with SDS were arrested by state police. The film shows that many of those individuals wished to be arrested to symbolize their dedication to the cause.

Contrarily, in an impromptu interview conducted in a lecture hall, a non-acting student called the acting students a “minority”, and one student claimed that the activists should be arrested and suspended. When a small number of SDS members entered that lecture hall to arouse their fellow students while the cameras were filming, a group of non-acting students shouted at them, “Keep the status quo, keep the status quo!” This debate would continue on until 1971, even after this specific period of action began to collapse on its ninth day.

The film also reveals President Babbidge’s tribulations during the demonstrations. Viewed by radical students as part of America’s ‘corporate elite’, Babbidge actually appears more conflicted and concerned than anything. We ultimately know from documents found in the President’s Office Records that Babbidge, too, believed in the same causes as the students, including racial, educational, occupational, and economic equality and justice. But he believed in pursuing different means to those ends. This can be seen in a statement he made on May 10, 1970 in response to another student action: “I can honestly say that I believe I understand the foundation causes of the student strike, I support many of them…but I cannot support the strike.”

The events of 1968 at the University of Connecticut indicate that the community struggled locally with issues that originated from society at large. Our university community continues to do the same today.

Carey MacDonald, writing intern