Hayden Carruth Papers

The Hayden Carruth Papers contain correspondence, writings, and various types of personal papers dating from 1897-2009. These materials document Carruth's childhood in Connecticut and New York, his early career in publishing, his work with James Laughlin and New Directions Publishing, and his teaching career at Syracuse University. The collection also extensively documents his writing career, primarily as a poet, but also as a critic and essayist.

The Correspondence series includes personal correspondence with family members and friends as well as correspondence with publishers and public or literary persons, many of whom were close friends as well. The family correspondence includes letters he wrote and received. Considering the collection as a whole, there are significantly more incoming letters than outgoing. Notable correspondents include Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Stanley Kunitz, James Laughlin, Denise Levertov, Philip Levine, Robert Lowell, Archibald MacLeish, Thomas Merton, W.S. Merwin, Anais Nin, Adrienne Rich, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, Diane Wakoski, and Yvor Winters, as well as several poets and writers who lived in Vermont, such as Alan Broughton, David Budbill, John Engels, David Huddle, and Galway Kinnell. Naturally, much of this correspondence includes discussions of poetry and poets, and many letters include unpublished poems written to or shared with the recipient. Several correspondents have added their collected correspondence with Carruth to the collection, and these are arranged separately.

The University of Vermont, Special Collections acquired the bulk of this collection from Carruth in three major batches with years separating the acquisitions. The arrangement of the Correspondence series generally follows the original arrangement of these batches, and so is not entirely consistent across the series. The first group of chronologically arranged Personal Correspondence primarily contains letters to and from Carruth's parents and first two wives, Sara Hudson and Eleanore Ray. The alphabetically arranged Personal Correspondence primarily contains letters from relatives and personal friends, including some literary friends. The General Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent or institution, and is primarily professional or literary in nature. However, there is a great deal of overlap among the different correspondence subseries, so researchers should look in each for a more complete account of Carruth's correspondence with an individual or during a period of time.

The Writings series includes notes, worksheets, manuscript drafts, typescript drafts, proofs, some publication related correspondence, and publicity materials of Carruth's individual poems, essays, introductions to other authors' books, reviews, short stories, and books of collections of poetry and prose. The poetry worksheets in particular contain both published and unpublished drafts of poems and display Carruth's revisions and creative process. As with the Correspondence subseries, there are several subseries of writings that contain some overlapping materials, due to the timing and nature of the three major accessions and several additions to the collection. For example, the Worksheets subseries contains many poems that may appear in one of the Book Manuscripts subseries. The Worksheets subseries also contains drafts of essays, reviews, and short stories, even though there are also subseries for each of these genres. There is no clear distinction between the two Book Manuscripts subseries, neither chronological nor alphabetical, and in some cases there are manuscripts for a single book in multiple subseries. Again a researcher is advised to check the folder list under each of the Writings subseries for a complete inventory of a single work, collection, or period of time.

The Personal Papers series contains artifacts, a few audio recordings, Carruth's diaries, financial records, student papers, and other materials that are of a personal nature such as Carruth's son's schoolwork, clippings, sheet music, printed material on topics of interest to Carruth, his teaching papers from Syracuse and Bucknell, and various documents and records related to his publications and copyrights. A file of interest contains materials related to the controversy of awarding Ezra Pound the inaugural Bollingen Prize for his Pisan Cantos. Carruth's student records document his years in Grade School, High School, University of North Carolina, and University of Chicago.

Though not as well known as many of his contemporaries, Carruth had a major influence on American poetry during the last half of the twentieth century through his editorial work, his reviews of poetry, his critical essays, his anthology The Voice That is Great within Us, his teaching, and his own distinct poetic voice. This collection is a unique and rich source documenting Carruth's perspectives on and contributions to American poetry.