News

Selected stories from the Beinecke Library, YaleNews, and external media outlets (the latter noted by source in parentheses after title of article).

  • Word Processing (Dally Nutmeg)

    October 30, 2019

    A ristotle, in his Poetics (ca. 330 B.C.), claimed that a poet’s function is not “to relate what has happened, but what may happen…” In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), William Wordsworth wrote that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…” And in the last line of his poem “Ars Poetica” (1926), Archibald MacLeish ventured, “A poem should not mean / But be.” None of these famous descriptions, however, are a match for Beyond Words: Experimental Poetry and the Avant-Garde, currently on view at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which shows just how “experimental” poetry can be and leaves you considering just what makes a poem a poem.

  • First major exhibition of indigenous art at the YUAG (Yale Daily News)

    October 30, 2019

    A new exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery begins with a bowl and ends with a basket — both works by Mohegan artists — to acknowledge the Quinnipiac land the University is built upon. This exhibit, titled “Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art,” will go on view Friday, Nov.1. The YUAG’s first major exhibition of indigenous North American art brings together objects from the YUAG, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It is entirely student-curated.

  • Exploring James Baldwin’s celebrity and mystery at the Beinecke

    October 28, 2019

    Robert Reid-Pharr ’89 M.A., ’91 M.A./M.Phil., ’94 Ph.D. discovered writer James Baldwin long before he set foot on Yale’s campus. “I read ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ as a 14-year-old,” Reid-Pharr says. “It was the first literature that spoke to me as a black person in a conservative, black, religious family.”

  • David (Jhave) Johnston’s Machine Poetry (Yale Herald)

    October 28, 2019

    I'd never been to a reading in the Beinecke before, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the four ambitiously long, semi-circular lines of chairs on the mezzanine were mostly full by the time I arrived at 4:55 p.m. Perhaps I walked into Jhave Johnston’s reading on Oct. 17 overly expecting to have the words to describe what I would see, knowing as I did that the reading/performance was part of the current Beinecke exhibition, Beyond Words: Experimental Poetry & the Avant-Garde

  • Yale Younger Poet prizewinners and judges discuss the honor and their craft

    October 21, 2019

    For a poet who is little known, winning an award like the Yale Younger Poets Prize can be life changing, noted Airea D. Matthews, who earned that honor in 2016. In a panel discussion on Oct. 11, Matthews and several other poets who have won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition agreed that the prize, awarded since 1919 by Yale University Press, has hugely benefitted their careers, but some said there can be a downside to prizewinning.

  • The ketubah: A document of devotion (The Canadian Jewish News)

    October 18, 2019

    It’s not too often that you find a legal document that can also be a stunning work of art illustrating love and commitment. The ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, has for thousands of years detailed a husband’s obligations to his wife during marriage and his responsibilities in the case of divorce. Beyond that, the ketubah has become a prized piece of Judaica which artists have elevated to become a document of devotion.

  • David Milch Papers

    October 7, 2019

    The papers of screenwriter and producer David Milch include writings, scripts, correspondence, videocassettes, printed material, and ephemera.

  • Gerrit Lansing Papers

    October 2, 2019

    The personal and literary archive of American poet Gerrit Lansing is open for research

  • The Origin Story of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Archinect)

    October 1, 2019

    Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill are three names hardly unrecognizable. Still one of America’s largest architecture practices and pioneers of the modern skyscraper, but how did it get its start? Better yet, who is Skidmore? And who is Owings? How about Merrill? And how did the three meet? What is the story behind one of America’s most important practices? It is a story few have told and even fewer know, one filled with twists, turns, and unexpected surprises.

  • The Force of Looking: Kamel Daoud in the spotlight. (The Nation)

    September 30, 2019

    In one of his more affecting columns, Daoud writes of a trip to Yale’s Beinecke Library, where he finds a handwritten manuscript of The Myth of Sisyphus. Daoud pores over Camus’s scratched-out lines, noting that “the manuscript is the place where the book hasn’t erased its other possibilities.”

  • Debbie Does Dress (New York Times)

    September 28, 2019

    Ms. Bayley’s photographic and personal archives have been purchased by the Beinecke Library at Yale, and for months she has been sorting through her files. She came upon a contact sheet of herself in the dress taken by an old boyfriend, and that spurred some memories. “At some point, I gave the dress to Debbie,” she said. “I think she thought it was a shirt. She always wore it over pink jeans.” Ms. Harry wore it when Blondie performed at a bar called My Father’s Place in Roslyn, N.Y., in 1978.