Students interested in literature and poetry had a chance to see and touch artifacts exhibiting the innermost thoughts of 20th century America’s greatest literary minds at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center on Wednesday.
Author, Boston University professor and scholar of modern poetry Bonnie Costello lectured and answered questions about the pieces exhibited in the Student Discovery Seminar titled “Poetry and Literature.”
The collection included letters, first editions, illustrations and scribbled notes on an odd array of objects, like ticket stubs, envelopes and scrap paper, demonstrating the literary figures’ creative processes.
“It’s fascinating that you don’t have to get these documents secondhand. I mean, no one was supposed to see these things,” said HGARC Assistant Director for Manuscripts Ryan Hendrickson.
Letters and literature by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, T.S. Elliot, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, William Butler Yeats and Allen Ginsberg were among those exhibited.
The 11 attendees consulted Costello, Hendrickson and Acquisitions Assistant Adam Dixon with questions.
“Students can get a unique chance to converse with these people in the flesh,” Costello said.
Attendees said they enjoyed observing the artifacts.
“Touching and interacting with rare books adds another dimension and lends an immediacy to the works,” said MBA student Katherine Alex. “I thought it was really exciting. It was really cool to have [Costello] shed light on the texts.”
Alex and other attendees were witness to literary squabbles documented in letters, the internal musings of a number of authors and poets and a number of notable first editions, such as an illustrated version of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
“These seminars are unusual,” Costello said. “They’re here for students, and bring in faculty to have people talk about their own experiences . . . it’s a great enrichment source, one unlike the classroom.”
The experience HGARC offers is also one unlike other research centers, as well, at which you have to see documents “in a very controlled way,” Hendrickson said.
HGARC offers seminars several times a year, on a number of topics ranging from performing arts, like ballet and opera, to nursing.
“The Gotlieb Center if very concerned with involving the student body in a more active way,” Dixon said. “We want them to see what’s at their fingertips.”
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