"These Are My People; This Is My Tribe":
​Anne Waldman's Poetic Collaborations
Project statement
The second-generation New York School Poets created some of the most unique poetry written to date, largely, I would argue, due to the influence they each had on each other. More so than any of their predecessors, the second-generation lived in and out of each other’s chapbooks, so to speak; they quoted each other in their poetry, referenced their coffee dates and parties, and collaborated to a staggering degree generally in which they sometimes “acknowledged the identity of the authors only at the bottom of the page, and sometimes not at all” (Kane 344), which gave these poets a self-contained group identity outside of the formal qualities of their writing, one isolated by inside jokes and personal relationships. Inspired by this dynamic I took to the archives in search of a lynchpin personality at the heart of this close-knit group and found Anne Waldman. Based on rare and lesser-known primary sources found during my search at Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, this project focuses on Anne Waldman as an epicenter of second-generation New York School poetic collaborations. This collection of works, featuring privately printed pamphlets like Four Travels and small press books and pamphlets like Stage Duo and Polar Ode, demonstrates the breadth and variety of Waldman’s poetry collaboration within this intensely social group and supports the notion that her work is and was essential to the second-generation New York School Poets sense of unity and identity. 
Collaborations