American Poetry Review records Ms. Coll. 349 Finding aid prepared by Maggie Kruesi. Last updated on June 23, 2020. University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts 2001 American Poetry Review records Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................4 Scope and Contents....................................................................................................................................... 5 Administrative Information........................................................................................................................... 7 Controlled Access Headings..........................................................................................................................8 Other Finding Aids........................................................................................................................................9 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 10 Correspondence......................................................................................................................................10 APR Events and Projects...................................................................................................................... 20 Financial Records, Advertising, Subscriptions..................................................................................... 21 Manuscript logbooks..............................................................................................................................23 Photographs............................................................................................................................................24 Production Materials and Notes............................................................................................................ 25 Oversize Galleys.................................................................................................................................... 26 Published Copies of The American Poetry Review...............................................................................29 Oversize..................................................................................................................................................30 Memorabilia........................................................................................................................................... 31 Appendix A: Photographs..................................................................................................................... 33 Appendix B: Oversize Photographs...................................................................................................... 92 - Page 2 - American Poetry Review records Summary Information Repository University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Creator American Poetry Review. Title American Poetry Review records Call number Ms. Coll. 349 Date [inclusive] 1971-1998 Extent 217 boxes Language English Abstract The collection primarily comprises the editorial files maintained on each contributor to the journal. Included in these files are correspondence between the authors, translaters, and editors of APR, manuscripts submitted for publication, galleys corrected by the authors and editors, and editors’ votes and comments on submitted manuscripts. Other series include a small section of administrative correspondence, financial records from 1972-1980, photographs of the writers whose work has been published in APR (many of which may be viewed online), and an incomplete run of the periodical. Cite as: American Poetry Review records, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania - Page 3 - American Poetry Review records Biography/History The American Poetry Review was founded in 1972 in Philadelphia by poets Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker. Innovative in concept and in its newsprint/tabloid format, the magazine aimed to reach the largest possible audience by publishing the best contemporary poetry, fiction, essays, and translations. The first issue, published in November/December 1972, featured translations from Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses by Donald D. Walsh and translations of Cesar Vallejo by David Smith. There were poems by Allen Ginsberg, C. K. Williams, Philip Levine, Louis Simpson, Marvin Bell, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, and David Ignatow (also an associate editor of the journal) and essays, columns, and book reviews by Joyce Carol Oates, Diane Wakoski, Donald Hall, and Richard Howard; plus the first in a series on Poetry in the Classroom by Denise Levertov. The issue was 48 pages long and received enthusiastic letters of endorsement from poets and other subsc ribers, some of which are preserved in this collection. With wide support and praise from the poetry community but no capital, the magazine struggled financially during its early years. The American Poetry Review was housed, at no charge, in a small room at the Jewish Ys and Centers of Greater Philadelphia YM-YWHA Branch at Broad and Pine streets and the editors worked without pay. After several years of scraping together resources to produce the magazine, the magazine's situation began to improve in the mid-1970s. In December 1975 APR/World Poetry Inc. was granted nonprofit, tax-exempt status. During the summer of 1976 the magazine moved to a larger office donated by Temple University Center City at 1616 Walnut Street and that fall launched a successful advertising and direct mail campaign which doubled its subscription list from 6,000 to 12,000 subscribers within a year. Over the next few years APR received grant support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Dietrich Foundation while increasing its subscriptions, advertising, and store sales which account for the majority of its income. The magazine is bi-monthly, published six times a year by World Poetry, Inc. One of the keys to its success from the beginning has been national distribution. By the late 1970s The American Poetry Review was recognized thro ughout North America and internationally as the place where many contemporary poets would first wish their work to appear. The journal was flooded with submissions, still operating with a small editorial staff working for minimal salaries. The journal fea tured special supplements, expanding to 56 pages, to accommodate some of these submissions and to provide space for publishing long poems or long essays and interviews, formats which are not common or possible in many small press publications. In February of 1977 the New York Times and the local press ran stories about an accusatory “manifesto” charging APR with bias against minorities and women. This “Statement on the Editorial Policy of The American Poetry Review” was signed by June Jordan, Adrienne Rich (both contributors to APR) and others seeking to increase the numbers of women and minorities published there. In response, APR maintained its policy of welc oming and reading unsolicited manuscripts, publishing the work of unknown writers, researching small press publications to discover new writers, and featuring the work and voices of many minority and women writers in the publication. Over the years, The American Poetry Review provided an ongoing forum for controversies over the inclusion of women, African-American, - Page 4 - American Poetry Review records Asian-American, and Hispanic poets, and many such poets received serious recognition from other writers in its pages before they came to the attention of the academy or major publishing houses. An example is Marge Piercy's discussion of Audre Lorde's poetry in Piercy's inaugural column in A PR 5, no. 2 (1976). The magazine crossed disciplinary and genre boundaries, publishing essays, reviews, interviews, prose, photographs, and a significant number of translations of poetry in many languages from around the world, anticipating the move toward globalization and cultural studies in universities. A strong supporter of the poetry-in-the-schools movement, the magazine ran a series of columns, essays, and anthologies of poetry in the schools from across the United States, providing at the same time opportunities for schools to receive subscriptions to APR for classroom use. Beginning in the 1980s APR provided services and organized events beyond the publication of the magazine. APR sponsored poetry readings by Etheridge Knight at Philadelphia prisons, by Stanley Kunitz and by C. K. Williams at the University of the Arts; workshops on play writing, acting and directing by Edward Albee; and a symposium titled “Freedom and the Poet's Responsibility to Society” held in April 1984. In 1985 with support from CIGNA, the American Poetry Review ran a Philadelphia Poets Project Workshop for teachers and students with poet Gerald Stern in the Philadelphia public high schools. In 1986 a retrospective exhibition of manuscripts from the archives of The American Poetry Review was held at the Rose nbach Museum and Library. Through the 1990s the magazine continued to publish the work of new and established writers