Poets House celebrates the life and work of iconic poet Emily Dickinson in a groundbreaking exhibition of original manuscripts, rare books, and even a recipe from the Donald & Patricia Oresman Collection. With a smaller, concurrent exhibition of poet and artist Jen Bervin's Dickinson-based works, as well as a sequence of related public programs, this fall series will evoke the radical nature of Dickinson's life and work, opening new doors for Dickinson lovers and inspiring Dickinson neophytes. Both exhibitions are on view through January 28, 2012.

Admission Free
Read the full press release here

Also on view are Jen Bervin's embroidered works based on Dickinson's manuscripts.

A Florianthology: An Exhibition on the Art and Poetry of Douglas Florian
On view: February 28, 2012 through April 21, 2012, during regular library hours

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 26, 2012, 10:00am – 2:00pm
with a Poetry Reading and Book Signing by Douglas Florian at 11:00am

Founding Friendships: Treasures from the Collections of Elizabeth Kray and Stanley Kunitz
On view: May 15, 2012 through October 6, 2012, during regular library hours

Poets House co–founders, poet Stanley Kunitz and arts administrator Elizabeth Kray, wanted Poets House to be a place of friendship. This exhibition, comprising art works from Kunitz's collections and numerous manuscripts from Kray's, foregrounds their dedication to amity and hospitality. Highlights include paintings by Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Jack Tworkov, among many others, as well as letters by Galway Kinnell, Denise Levertov, Derek Walcott and James Wright.

Admission Free

Poets House Celebrates the 75^th Anniversary of New Directions
On view: July 21, 2011–October 8, 2011, during regular library hours

Poets House is delighted to honor New Directions – one of the most innovative publishers in the United States – on the occasion of its 75^th anniversary with a special exhibition of art, books, letters and ephemera.

Founded by James Laughlin in 1936, New Directions has published some of the leading American poets of the last century, including Djuna Barnes, Robert Creeley, H.D., Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams, as well as many international figures, from Li Po to Octavio Paz. Today, New Directions continues the tradition of publishing innovative literature from around the world, adding approximately thirty books a year to a list of more than 1,000 titles in print. Poetry remains central to the company's publishing vision.

This exhibition represents both the spirit and history of the publisher. The show will comprise rare books, letters, photographs and works of art including pieces by Jean Cocteau, Alvin Lustig, and Henry Miller, among others. New Directions was established in 1936 with the publication of the first volume of the anthology New Directions in Poetry and Prose. The edition included work by Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, ee cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, Lorine Niedecker and Louis Zukofsky, among others.

Admission Free

Alberto de Lacerda

Insolent Grace: An Exhibition on the Transatlantic Life of Alberto de Lacerda
On view: April 6, 2011–June 18, 2011, during regular library hours

This exhibition unveils treasures from the archive of Alberto de Lacerda (1928–2007), one of Portugal's most admired poets, who spent the majority of his adult life in England and the United States. On display are the fruits of his friendships with world-renowned writers and artists: letters to de Lacerda, inscribed books, handwritten poems and other gifts from the likes of John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Marianne Moore, Octavio Paz and Anne Sexton, among many others.

Exhibit Opening: Wednesday, April 6
•5:00pm Opening Reception
•7:00pm Panel with Jhumpa Lahiri, Christopher Middleton, Luís de Sousa & David Wevill
After the opening reception, fellow writers and friends gather to remember this charismatic figure.

Exhibition: Admission free

Panel: $10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Insolent Grace was made possible with support from the Mário Soares Foundation, the Luso–American Foundation & the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Portugal.

Charles Olson at Jean Radoslovitch's
by Elsa Dorfman

Afterwards, in between, and since: A Charles Olson Centennial Exhibition

On view: December 7, 2010–March 23, 2011, during regular library hours

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Charles Olson’s birth, Poets House will present a selection of books by and about Olson, along with Charles Alexander’s set of ten broadsides entitled “Charles Olson: Language as Physical Fact.” The broadsides were drawn from The Maximus Poems and printed in an edition of 15 copies in 2008 at Chax Press in Tucson. The exhibition is on view during regular library hours, Tuesday through Friday, 11:00am–7:00pm, Saturday, 11:00am–6:00pm.

The display at Poets House includes recent gifts from board member André Spears, a poet and Olson scholar, and photographer Elsa Dorfman, whose portrait of Olson is also on view.

Charles Olson was born December 27, 1910, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Among other academic institutions, he taught at the legendary Black Mountain College, where he was an instructor and rector from 1951 to 1956. His first book, Call Me Ishmael, a groundbreaking study of Melville and Moby-Dick, was published in 1947, and his first book of poetry, In Cold Hell, in Thicket, was published in 1953. His influential essay, "Projective Verse," appeared in 1950. He spent most of the last dozen years of his life in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the geographic muse for The Maximus Poems, which he had begun in 1950. The first volume was published in 1960, the second in 1968, and the third in 1975, following his death on January 10, 1970. The complete edition of The Maximus Poems, edited by George Butterick, was published in 1983.

Admission free

All Souls: Poems from the Dakotas
by Kathleen Norris
with drawings by Ed Colker
New York: Haybarn Press, 1993. Edition of 100.

Gathering: An Exhibition of Poems & Prints by Ed Colker
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 6:00–8:00pm
On view Monday, June 28 through Saturday, October 9 during regular library hours

Creating art in response to poetry since the 1960s, Ed Colker has "produced pure expressions, stirring symbols of inner truths or imaginings that can sometimes be inspired by or incite poetry" (New York Times). This show consists of elegant, mercurial abstract lithographs made in response to the work of a diverse group of fifteen poets, ranging from Rosmarie Waldrop to Kathleen Norris to Pablo Neruda; the poems are printed in letter-press form alongside the color vignettes. The exhibition marks 50 years of "prints for poetry" by Ed Colker and his presses, Editions du Grenier and Haybarn Press.

Admission free

King of the River (to Stanley Kunitz), 2010
oil on birch panel, 48 x 48 inches

Radiance: An Exhibition of Paintings by James Walton Fox
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 6:00–8:00pm
On view Monday, June 28 through Saturday, October 9 during regular library hours

The paintings of James Walton Fox find inspiration in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Rumi, A.R. Ammons and others, combining lines of poetry with the gesture of handwriting, saturated colors and dynamic compositions. His work "treats the concrete reality of language as place," as Fox says, and "create[s] a dimension where the radiance of life is not separate from forms; text is not separate from space, but actually generates space; and the Poetry—the very music of creation—is made visible, physical, and local."

Admission free

The Green Man: An Exhibition
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 20, 3:00–5:00pm
On View through Saturday, June 19
Admission Free

This series of paintings by British-born poet and painter Basil King depicts the Green Man, the pre- Christian archetypal figure of creation and the earth, emerging in the guise of British historical figures, such as Guy Fawkes and Walter Raleigh.

Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.

"How Does a Bird Imagine? What Does a Tree Know?"
An Exhibition of Community-Created Poetic Spaces
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 20, 3:00–5:00pm
On View through Saturday, June 19

For all ages, this exhibition documents the creation of poetic spaces by a public-school community in response to images of landscape and shared journeys: a bird, a tree, a labyrinth.

Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.

Admission free

Photo by Susanne Michelus

The Fist Clenched Round My Heart:
An Exhibition of Love Poetry at Poets House
On view: Saturday, February 13–Saturday, March 13

This intimate exhibition of love poetry is drawn from The Reed Foundation Library at Poets House.

Admission free

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
"Robert Frost's Annual Christmas Cards," An Exhibition & Celebration
Opening Reception: 6:00-8:00pm
On view: through January 30, 2010

This intimate exhibition features beautiful, illustrated chapbooks of Frost's poetry published by Spiral Press and sent out as holiday greetings by the revered poet as well as by his publishers, collectors and friends.

Master printer Joseph Blumenthal of Spiral Press printed 275 of the first Robert Frost Christmas cards in 1929 as a holiday greeting for himself, Henry Holt and Company (one of Frost's publishers) and two Holt executives. Blumenthal forgot to print any for the poet, who subsequently charged Blumenthal with the task of retrieving a half a dozen cards for him to use. The next holiday chapbook was published in collaboration with Frost in 1934 with a print run of 775 and became an annual publication until 1962.

The display at Poets House comprises a gift from Frank Platt, long-time Vice President (and founding member) of the Poets House Board, and augmented by a loan from Ward Smith, a collector of Frost books, manuscripts, pamphlets and letters. Platt's gift consists of holiday chapbooks sent to him personally by Robert Frost.

Read more about this exhibition at the New York Times blog, "Paper Cuts."

Sacred Burial Grounds:
Alphanumeric Painting by August Highland
Opening Reception: Friday, May 12, 6-8pm
On view May 12 through June 24, 2006
Admission Free

Like ancient civilizations slumbering beneath cities of glass and steel, classical poetries are buried deep in Highland’s visual texts on large canvases, which explore the modern experience of language.

August Highland is an experimental writer and visual artist based in San Diego. Since he developed "Alphanumeric Painting" in 2002, he has shown it in over 25 shows, including four solo shows.

Detail from "Dante" by August Highland

A Bestiary: Installations by Jane Greer and Brian Getnick
Opening Reception: Friday, March 24, 6-8pm
Exhibition on view March 24-May 6, 2006
Admission Free

Jane Greer's "Standing Up, Down" fills Poets House with cut-paper evocations of creatures great and small, while Brian Getnick presents "Curtains! Curtains!" a sculpture and video installation.

Jane Greer is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center, NYU's Grey Art Gallery, the Ronald Feldman Gallery, Henoch Gallery, and various international venues.

Brian Getnick has participated in group shows in Rome, The Hague, and New York, and has recently had a solo show at the Lisa Boyle Gallery in Chicago.

Detail from "Standing Up, Down" by Jane Greer

"The Old Brutalists" by Brian Getnick

Unlikely Angel: Dwight Ripley & the New York School
Curated by Douglas Crase
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 9, 2006, 6-8pm
Exhibition on view February 9-March 18, 2006
Admission Free

A rare glimpse into the archives of Dwight Ripley, little-known figure behind the pivotal Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Showplace for New York School painters, the gallery also published a series of chapbooks by many of those who later became known as the New York School of Poets. Among the items on display are John Ashbery’s first book, Turandot; a rare copy of Frank O'Hara's Oranges (original cover by Grace Hartigan); a painting by Helen Frankenthaler; and samples of Ripley’s own drawings.

Detail from "Merbomb in a Cage"
by Dwight Ripley, 1951

Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era
Exhibition on View November 4–December 10, 2005
Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 5pm;
Panel Discussion & Reading: 6:30-8pm
with Kimberly Bird, Gene Frumkin, Estelle Gershgoren Novak, Naomi Replansky, Tom Viertel & Mel Weisburd
$7, Free for Members

An exhibition of archival material relating to The California Quarterly and Coastlines, the leading literary publications of 1950s Los Angeles, representing more than a decade of poetry and graphic arts in the city during the anti-Communist investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Hollywood. Poetry and prose by Allen Ginsberg, Alvaro Cardona-Hine, Charles Bukowski, Edwin Rolfe, Henry Coulette, Kenneth Rexroth, Thomas McGrath, Naomi Replansky, and Don Gordon will be included as well as a sampling of drawings and photographs. This show will present the work of an important, if often overlooked, community in Post-War American poetry.

Join us for a panel discussion, with three poets—Gene Frumkin, Estelle Gershgoren Novak, and Mel Weisburd—and scholar Kimberly Bird, as they address the relationship between politics and poetry, with a special focus on the role the two magazines played in Los Angeles during the McCarthy years. Naomi Replansky will join the panelists for a poetry reading to close the evening.

Kimberly Bird is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Gene Frumkin, co-founder and poetry editor from 1955 to 1958 of Coastlines, is the author of many collections of poetry, including The Rainbow Walker and The Mystic Writing Pad. Estelle Gershgoren Novak is the editor of Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era and the author of two collections of poetry. Naomi Replansky's first book, Ring Song, was nominated for the 1952 National Book Award in poetry; The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems appeared in 1994. Tom Viertel, an editor at Coastlines, is an oral historian of Los Angeles' émigré arts community of the 1940s, which included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann. Mel Weisburd was co-founder, editor in chief, and managing editor of Coastlines. His articles and poems have appeared in many publications.

Purgatorio: Prints by Milton Glaser
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9, 2005, 6-8pm
Exhibition on view September 9-October 29, 2005
Admission Free

The first New York presentation of 20 exquisite monoprints illustrating scenes from Dante’s Purgatorio by the renowned artist Milton Glaser.

Milton Glaser is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He co-founded the revolutionary Pushpin Studios in 1954, founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968, and established Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974. He has had retrospective exhibitions at both the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art.

“Beatrice” from Dante's Purgatorio.
Image courtesy of Milton Glaser, Inc.

A Poet’s Eye for Collage
Collages and Handmade Books by Star Black
Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 2005, 6pm
On view through April 29, 2005

These works on paper bring together text and image in what Black describes as “visual pages,” which, like linguistic acts of creation, are “brief and bounded by space.”

Poet and photographer Star Black is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Ghostwood. Her photographs are in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. Her collages have been exhibited in various galleries in New York City and Long Island.

“Walking, Poems & Buildings”
A Poetry & Architecture Collaboration
Curated by poet Annie Finch & architect Ben Jacks
Opening Reception: Friday, January 7, 2005, 6pm
On view through February 25, 2005

The exhibit “Walking, Poems & Buildings” features poems and architectural models of a bus shelter, a “writer’s hut” and a nature observation center created collaboratively by students of poet Annie Finch and architect Ben Jacks at Miami University. This show explores the ways in which architects and poets build and inhabit durable and harmonious forms, and how walking creates a rhythmic link between the two pursuits.

Ben Jacks teaches in the Department of Architecture and Interior Design at Miami University in Ohio. He is currently researching and writing about walking, landscape, and buildings. Poet, translator and librettist Annie Finch teaches in the creative writing program at Miami University. Her books of poetry include Calendars and Eve, as well as a translation of the Complete Poems of French Renaissance poet Louise Labé. She has also written or edited five books on poetics, including The Ghost of Meter and A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women.

The Art of Reading
From the Donald & Patricia Oresman Collection
Opening Reception: Friday, October 8, 2004, 6pm
On view through November 22, 2004

Please join us for an exceptional exhibit of images culled from the Oresman collection. Rodney Phillips curates a selection of over thirty works of art, from Magritte to Brainard, Diebenkorn to Warhol, representing wildly different styles and mediums but collectively focused around the theme of people reading. “I think there is an intensity to reading that captures artists’ imaginations,” Donald Oresman says, “because it has a very private element to it.” We invite our readers to step into a public display of this private endeavor, to enter into an evocative dialogue with artists who share a love for the intimate act of reading.

Donald Oresman is of Counsel to Simpson Thacher and Bartlett in New York City. He has served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Paramount Communications Inc. Poet Rodney Phillips is a celebrated curator and editor whose recent achievements include an exhibit of William Butler Yeats’ work at the New York Public Library, where he was Director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. He edited A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, among many others.

David Hockney. Yves-Marie de Paris
Graphite and colored pencil, 1974
17” x 13”

Rene Magritte. L’Eminence Grise
Photograph, 1938
3” x 2”

The New Millennium Chapbook
On view April 2–April 30, 2004

While occupying the margins of the literary world, the small press and the chapbook are often vehicles for defining historic poetry communities and shifts in poetics. This exhibit highlights new works published by contemporary small presses that continue this dynamic tradition while exploring the possibilities of the chapbook form.

Curated by Ryan Murphy, who is the author of On Violet Street, a chapbook of poems published by the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. With Patrick Masterson, he operates A Rest Press.

Community-Word Project Mural Exhibit
On view February 7-28, 2004

Vibrant murals that feature the poetry and artwork of participants in the Community-Word Project.

Founded in 1997, The Community-Word Project is a New York City based arts-in-education organization that seeks to increase the literacy and leadership of at-risk public school children.

"Unlocking the door I see the blue large sky and I feel golden wings growing out of my back so I can fly."

—4th graders, P.S. 79, Bronx, NY
(photo credit: Alex Harsley)