Archive Catalog 1954-2004

This complete catalog includes the very first audio recording made by the Poetry Center - of Theodore Roethke, reading from his poetry on February 21, 1954 in San Francisco - and it includes the most recent digital video recordings from The Poetry Center's Spring 2004 season, just drawn to a close. As a catalog, making available to the public about 2000 recorded occasions of contemporary poets and other writers reading and otherwise performing their works in front of an audience. allowing their art its particular presence, it is a utilitarian document, to be sure. In preparing this catalog for publication, it became evident to us that it also is a historic register of the past 48 years of poetry and related writing as it happened in San Francisco. The American Poetry Archives collection assembled by The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University ever since 1954, as far as we are aware, is te largest, most comprehensive - and astoundingly heterogeneous - publicly available collection of poetry on tape, certinly in the U.S., and maybe anywhere.

Please take note: The Poetry Center's tapes produced for the American Poetry Archives are raw documents, made live on-site with one microphone, one camera, and minimal post-production. These are not television-quality programs. Archives tapes provide documentation of the event as it occurs, and flaws in the original recordings do exist. Typically, these are unique recordings: no second takes, no splicing in or out, extremely few edits. Many of the oldest tapes, however, have been treated and restored to allow us to offer better quality reproductions.



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