The Yale Collection of American Literature has acquired the papers of poet and visual artist Ray DiPalma.

The author of some thirty books of poetry and visual work including Letters, Provocations, and Motion of the Cypher, DiPalma has had a rich and varied career as poet, editor, book artist, and artistic collaborator, beginning in the 1960s. He lives in New York City and teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

DiPalma’s literary archive includes correspondence, manuscripts, printed materials (largely little magazines), one of a kind book works, and documentation of collaborative projects with other writers and artists. Autograph journals and notebooks and heavily edited typescripts as well as many manuscripts of other poets and fiction writers, often with autograph corrections, are also present in the collection.

Materials in the archive, such as correspondence with Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejanian, and Ron Silliman, document the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing community of the 1970s and 1980s. The archive has a significant international component, including correspondence with contemporary French poets, editors, and translators.