John Taggart Papers
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http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2r29n9vh No online items John Taggart Papers Special Collections & Archives Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Copyright 2005 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla 92093-0175 [email protected] URL: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/sca/index.html John Taggart Papers MSS 0011 1 Descriptive Summary Languages: English Contributing Institution: Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla 92093-0175 Title: John Taggart Papers Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0011 Physical Description: 29.6 Linear feet (69 archives boxes, 1 records carton and 2 oversized folders) Date (inclusive): 1962-2012 Abstract: 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 The collection contains manuscripts and typescripts of Taggart's published and unpublished poetry, juvenilia from the 1960s and 70s, fiction, and essays devoted to the work of individual artists such as George Oppen and Edward Hopper as well as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. Scope and Content of Collection Papers of John Taggart, a contemporary American poet known for his formal and prosodic innovations, and literary technique associated with Objectivist theory. The collection contains manuscripts and typescripts of Taggart's published and unpublished poetry, juvenilia from the 1960s and 70s, fiction, and essays devoted to the work of individual artists such as George Oppen and Edward Hopper as well as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. Accessions Processed in 1987 The bulk of this accession dates from the early 1970s when Taggart was a doctoral student at Syracuse University, assembling his first collection of poetry and editing Maps. It also includes essays completed by Taggart while an undergraduate at Earlham College and a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Arranged in seven series: 1) NOTEBOOKS AND JOTTINGS, 2) POETRY, 3) FICTION, 4) TRANSLATIONS, 5) ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 6) CORRESPONDENCE and 7) MISCELLANEOUS. Accessions Processed in 1989 Arranged in four series: 8) POETRY, 9) ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 10) CORRESPONDENCE and 11) MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS. ACCESSIONS PROCESSED IN 1991-2000 Arranged in three series: 12) CORRESPONDENCE, 13) WRITINGS and 14) NOTEBOOKS. Accession Processed in 2005, 2015 Additional materials highlighting Taggart's literary and teaching career, including more recent letters from colleagues, editors and fellow poets, numerous drafts of both published and unpublished poems and critical works, as well as composition notebooks. Arranged in three series: 15) CORRESPONDENCE, 16) WRITINGS and 17) NOTEBOOKS. Biography 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). Taggart's poetry first appeared in print in 1965, when three poems, "Upon the Sweeping Flood," "An Egyptian Cat," and an "Evening with Anna Akhmatova" were published in Crucible. Since then, Taggart's work has appeared in many literary journals including The North American Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Ironwood, Boundry 2, Sulfur and Temblor. His work was featured in the 1969 summer issue of Cid Corman's Origin, and the 1979 spring issue of Paper Air was given over entirely to Taggart's work. Besides Taggart's long poem Peace on Earth, a "healing prayer" on the Vietnam War, the issue included commentary on Taggart's work by Toby Olson, Bruce Andrews, Jackson Mac Low, Paul Metcalf, and several others. John Taggart Papers MSS 0011 2 Taggart's poetry has been printed in several anthologies including The Gist of Origin (Grossman, 1975), Pushcart Prize Anthology (Avon, 1980), New Directions: An International Anthology of Prose and Poetry (issues 24 and 41), and Poetes Americans D'Aujourd'hui (Delta, 1986). In addition to numerous appearances in literary magazines and journals, Taggart has also published several collections of verse including To Construct a Clock, The Pyramid is a Pure Crystal, and Prism and the Pine Twig (Elizabeth Press 1971, 1974 and 1977 respectively), Dodeka, with an introduction by Robert Duncan (Membrane, 1979), Peace on Earth (Turtle Island, 1981), Dehiscence (Membrane, 1983), Loop (Sun and Moon, 1991), Standing Wave (Lost Roads, 1993), When the Saints (Talisman House, 1999), Pastorelles (Flood Editions, 2004), Crosses: Poems 1992-1998 (Stop Press, 2006), There Are Birds (Flood Editions, 2008) and Is Music: Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2010). Taggart has earned a reputation as a judicious, though infrequent, commentator on contemporary American poetry. In addition to seminal articles on Zukofsky, Oppen and Objectivist poetics, Taggart has also reviewed the work of Wallace Stevens, William Bronk, Robert Duncan, Bruce Andrews, Theodore Enslin, and several other contemporary American poets. He was also the editor and publisher of Maps, an acclaimed literary magazine appearing during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and, in 1978, edited an issue of Truck (1978) devoted to the work of Enslin. Taggart was a professor of literature and creative writing at Shippensburg State University from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. His work as writer and teacher has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship (1965), a Distinguished Academic Service Award from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a Pushcart Prize, and the Chicago Review Poetry Prize, as well as two National Endowments for the Arts Writing Fellowships (1976 and 1986). Preferred Citation John Taggart Papers, MSS 11. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Acquisition Information Acquired 1983-2012. Restrictions The reel-to-reel audio tape in box 23 is restricted. Researchers must request a user copy be produced. Publication Rights Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection. Subjects and Indexing Terms American poetry -- 20th century Weil, James L. -- Correspondence Young, Karl, 1947- -- Correspondence Howe, Susan, 1937- -- Correspondence Metcalf, Paul C. -- Correspondence Olson, Toby -- Correspondence Butterick, George F. -- Correspondence Creeley, Robert, 1926-2005 -- Correspondence Enslin, Theodore -- Correspondence Graves, Bradford, 1939-1998 -- Correspondence Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955 -- Correspondence Zukofsky, Louis, 1904-1978 -- Correspondence Hopper, Edward, 1882-1967 -- Correspondence Bernstein, Charles, 1950- -- Correspondence Silliman, Ronald, 1946- -- Correspondence Oppen, George -- Correspondence Taggart, John, 1942- -- Archives Accessions Processed in 1987 John Taggart Papers MSS 0011 3 Accessions Processed in 1987 NOTEBOOKS AND JOTTINGS NOTEBOOKS AND JOTTINGS Scope and Content of Series Series 1) NOTEBOOKS AND JOTTINGS: Consists of notebooks, journals, and notecards dating from 1963 to 1983, and newspaper clippings with annotations or attached notes. Most of the earlier notebooks appear related to classes Taggart attended at Earlham College and Syracuse University. The loose notecards filed in this series are citations taken from his reading during the 1970s. (Taggart has been fond of composing on notecards and small sizes of loose leaf paper before preparing a final draft on standard 8 x 11 paper. Typically these notecards have been filed with or in close proximity to the typescript to which they pertain, but only when that relationship was quite evident.) The journals written during the 1980s are more closely connected to subsequently published work; they often contain seed ideas for poems and essays, but also citations from and comments on other writers. Box 1, Folder 1-4 Earlham notebook 1963 - 1964 Box 1, Folder 5 Notebook 1969 Box 1, Folder 6 Notebook "Surrealism" 1969 Box 1, Folder 7 Notebook "Arts-Ideas of 18th Century" Box 1, Folder 8 Notebook "Analytic Problems in Visual Arts" 1969 Box 1, Folder 9 Notebook "Wittgenstein" 1970 Box 1, Folder 10 Selected notebooks on Romanticism Box 1, Folder 11 Selected notes on Walt Whitman Box 1, Folder 12 Selected notes on Arnold Schoenberg Box 1, Folder 13 Notes on Luminist painters 1975 Box 1, Folder 14 Assorted notecards Box 2, Folder 1-3 Assorted notecards 1978 Box 2, Folder 4 Notebook 1981 - 1982 Box 2, Folder 5 Journal 1982 Box 2, Folder 6 Notebook 1982 - 1983 Box 2, Folder 7-11 Newspaper clippings with notes attached POETRY Scope and Content of Series Series 2) POETRY: Worksheets, heavily annotated drafts, and final versions of poems. Arranged in three