Kenneth Spencer Research Library

What is the role of a university regarding the needs and concerns of its students, staff, and faculty and members of the surrounding community? That is the central question posed by the 1968 student demonstrations at Columbia University in New York City.

University of Kansas alumnus Scott Colby was a graduate fellow in the East Asian Studies Department at Columbia during the demonstrations. Appreciating the historical significance of the event, he preserved copies of the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper and news clippings about the demonstrations from The New York Times and other local papers. Colby also collected fliers, pamphlets, and various group statements from news boxes in campus buildings, stacks of papers around campus, and students. For example, some fliers announce performances by Phil Ochs and the Grateful Dead and other events held on or near the “liberated” campus. The document “Who Rules Columbia?” is an analysis of the university’s real-estate holdings, connections to the United States intelligence and defense agencies, and national corporations headed by Columbia trustees. It raises questions about taxpayer-funded research enriching private corporations.

Colby recently donated these materials to Spencer Research Library (Call Number: RH WL MS 65). The collection documents how a group of Columbia students began a protest inside of Hamilton Hall, on April 23, 1968, defying the recent university ban on sit-ins and blocking Dean Henry Coleman from leaving his office. The main organized groups involved were the Society for Afro-American Students (SAS) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Columbia University had just broken ground on a gym in the publicly-owned Morningside Park, despite widespread opposition from student groups and the Harlem community. SAS dubbed it “Gym Crow” on account of the separate and much smaller facilities allocated for the mostly Black Harlem residents. In addition to supporting the SAS stance against the gym, SDS had demonstrated against military and CIA recruitment on campus and protested the university’s involvement with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), which provided strategic military research.

The demonstrators issued a list of six demands (Box 1, Folders 6, 8, 11) of the university administration: give amnesty to demonstrators, halt construction of the gym, drop the charges against those who protested the gym construction, sever ties with the IDA, allow indoor demonstrations, and form a bipartite committee of students and faculty for judicial decisions. The students decided to stay in Hamilton Hall until the demands were met.

In his 2003 article on Black student activism at Columbia – part of Colby’s papers and available online – professor and author Stefan Bradley explains what happened next. The SAS rejected integrationist strategies of the nonviolent civil rights movement and focused on Black power, maintaining leadership of their demonstrations against the gym with the support of the surrounding Harlem community. For these reasons and others, SAS asked the white students to leave Hamilton Hall. Following the suggestion of the SAS, the leaders of SDS proceeded to occupy Low Library in solidarity. Over the course of the following week, SDS demonstrators (including students and community members) took over five campus buildings, causing classes to be cancelled. While the SAS activists focused on preventing the construction of the gym, SDS focused on ending Columbia’s support for the military, which they saw as a colonial power suppressing human rights in the region of Vietnam and elsewhere.

The recent unrest after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. was fresh in the minds of Columbia’s administrators, who feared the damage that the people of Harlem could do to the school.

Then the administration called the police. The brutality of the NYPD violently removing students from campus buildings galvanized support for the protestors. Many, including faculty, called for a strike on the university. A strike coordinating committee was created to represent thousands of people who supported the demonstrators’ demands.

The SAS was ultimately successful in stopping the construction of the gym. In response to the student demonstrations shutting down the school, Columbia University additionally cut ties with the IDA and restricted military recruitment on campus. The school’s Board of Trustees, which previously held all decision-making power, adopted the faculty recommendation to form a tripartite university senate that included representation for faculty and students.

Stefan Bradley explains how solidarity was key to achieving these goals:

It would be too simple to state that the black students of Columbia University achieved their goal of stopping the construction of the gym by their own protest efforts. The black protesters needed the support to the white students, just as the white radicals needed the black militants to advance their goals. While the black demonstrators had the ability to draw the attention of the university officials, the larger number of white radicals added manpower and momentum to the black students who protested on behalf of the community. The black student demonstrators’ insistence on separating themselves from the white protesters helped the radical white students to focus on their own agenda and goals as well. Because the white radicals now had a different focus, they, along with the black protestors, radicalized much of the general student body, and eventually shut Columbia University down for six weeks.

The student protests at Columbia were part of a nationwide movement in which students demanded that universities end militarism, corporatism, and racist policies on campus. There was a widespread push for more democratic control of universities to ensure these values. For example, about a year after the Columbia demonstrations, the governance structure at KU expanded beyond only tenured faculty.

The issues raised by the demonstrators are still being grappled with today – at Columbia, the University of Kansas, and other institutions of higher learning. University responsiveness to the concerns of minoritized communities, diversity of perspectives in the history of domestic and international conflicts, the impact of physical expansion of universities on the surrounding communities, institutional support for the military, students’ rights to protest, and police enforcement on campus are all relevant topics today. The Spencer Research Library is glad to make Scott Colby’s papers on the 1968 Columbia University demonstrations available to the public. Come explore the collection in our Reading Room and gain various perspectives from the past on the issues of today.

Erika Earles
Manuscripts Processor

Classic children’s books continue to connect generations through stories that inspire imagination, adventure, and wonder. In this fourth post in a series highlighting titles from Spencer Research Library’s vast children’s book collection, a well-traveled copy of The Odyssey for Boys and Girls reveals an unexpected connection across time.

My recent interest in The Odyssey began somewhat unexpectedly. I had seen discussions of a recent adaptation by a female author and was intrigued by the conversation surrounding it. There is something fascinating about watching a story evolve as each generation discovers new ways to tell it. Even so, I did not plan to see the new film adaptation. I rarely go to movies, and it likely would have passed me by had I not been invited. The experience left me thinking not only about Odysseus and his journey home, but also about the remarkable journey of the story itself.

A short time later, while searching for animal stories for an entirely different blog post, I happened upon a 1923 copy of The Odyssey for Boys and Girls translated and edited by Alfred John Church (Call Number: Children C36). Its striking Art Deco cover and spine immediately caught my attention, standing out among the surrounding volumes in a way they might not have only a few weeks earlier. Perhaps it was serendipity. Perhaps it was simply timing. Much like buying a new car and suddenly noticing the same model everywhere, once The Odyssey was on my mind, I seemed to encounter it at every turn.

Curious, I pulled the book from the shelf. I initially picked it up because of the story. Yet, as often happens when exploring historical children’s books, I soon found myself just as interested in the people hidden inside.

Like many people, I encountered The Odyssey through references, retellings, and popular culture long before I ever considered reading Homer himself. The Odyssey is a story about an epic journey. Odysseus struggles to find his way home, but the story itself has also been on a remarkable journey. For nearly three thousand years it has traveled across generations, languages, formats, and audiences. This 1923 edition, The Odyssey for Boys and Girls, represents one stop along that path, introducing an ancient hero to young readers who were beginning their own journeys.

As I opened the book, I didn’t expect the dedication to be the following:

Long before online reviews, social media, and star ratings, there was a five-year-old named Maisie whose opinion mattered enough to earn a dedication, which sparked my interest in the edition. It wasn’t just another adaptation. It came alive. Who was Maisie? How did her suggestions shape the story? What captured her imagination? Was she being read The Odyssey at age five?

The inscription reminded me of a phrase we still use today: “Explain it to me like I’m five.” Despite its humorous use, the phrase reflects something important. We are not asking for an idea to be made less significant. We are asking for it to be made accessible. In many ways, The Odyssey for Boys and Girls serves exactly that purpose. It does not attempt to replace Homer. Rather, it offers readers a place to begin. Every lifelong reader starts somewhere, and children’s adaptations often serve as the bridge between curiosity and confidence.

The Odyssey for Boys and Girls does not contain any illustrations of Odysseus, the Cyclops, the Sirens, or the storm-tossed seas. A child opening this book in the 1920s would be expected to create those images independently. That absence feels significant because it marks a transition many readers’ experience. Picture books invite us to look at a story. Chapter books ask us to imagine one. Somewhere between those stages, readers discover that words alone can create entire worlds.

Perhaps that is why I found myself thinking about Maisie who influenced The Odyssey for Boys and Girls. Was this one of the books that encouraged the transition from looking at stories to imagining them?

Often discussions about modern adaptations of classical texts focus on changes made. Yet I found myself asking a different question: Who might discover the story because of this adaptation? Children’s adaptations such as The Odyssey for Boys and Girls have been answering that question for generations. They are not replacements for the original work. They are invitations. Every lifelong reader starts somewhere. For nearly three thousand years, readers have continued finding meaning in Homer’s tale, a story explored in literary and historical contexts.

As I continued exploring The Odyssey for Boys and Girls, I found a bookplate (“from the books of”) with the handwritten name Meredith Belt.

There are a only few of us Merediths out there. Growing up, I was typically the only Meredith around. When you spend most of your life as the only Meredith in the room, seeing or hearing your name tends to feel personal. Encountering another Meredith has always felt unusual. Discovering one in a century-old children’s book felt even more so. Seeing their name transformed the book into an artifact with a personal connection. The owner was no longer an anonymous child from the past. I began imagining another Meredith, who claimed ownership one hundred years ago.

My understanding is that Meredith began as a masculine Welsh name before becoming more commonly associated with girls, which raises another question. Was Meredith Belt a girl or a boy? The inscription offers no clues and keeps its secret. Moreover, who was Meredith Belt? Was the book a gift to them? Did someone read it aloud to Meredith, or did they read it independently? The questions are impossible to answer.

For librarians and special collections staff, the history of a book’s ownership and use is known as provenance. Not every inscription makes a book historically significant, and not every marked book belongs in a special collection. In collections focused on children’s literature, however, traces left behind by readers can add valuable context. They help us understand not only what children read, but also how books moved through families, schools, and communities. A name inside a cover transforms a book from simply a text into evidence of a reader. Books were gifts, companions, bedtime rituals, and treasured possessions. Preserving them allows us to preserve not only stories, but evidence of how those stories were experienced. For me, Meredith Belt’s inscription is a reminder that every old book was once new to someone. Long before it arrived in our collection, this belonged to a child who turned its pages, imagined its adventures, and cared enough to claim ownership.

In working on this post, I discovered that Odysseus was not the only one on a journey.

There was Maisie, the five-year-old “first critic.” There was Meredith Belt, a child reader whose name remains inside the cover. There was the story itself, traveling across centuries and finding new audiences through adaptations, retellings, and children’s editions. And there was my own journey, which began with curiosity about a modern adaptation and led me to a century-old book.

The many questions raised about Meredith Belt’s inscription and Maisie, the first critic, will never be answered. One Meredith left behind a name. Another Meredith found it. For a moment, the distance between a child reader in the 1920s and a librarian one hundred years later felt surprisingly small.

Perhaps that is its own kind of legacy. Odysseus sailed across the wine-dark sea in search of home. His story has traveled even further, crossing centuries, languages, and generations of readers. This book has made a remarkable journey of its own. Meredith Belt could never have imagined that more than a century later, someone would still be speaking their name.

We rarely know which traces of our lives will endure. A favorite book. A handwritten inscription. Notes tucked inside. A name carefully written inside a cover. Yet sometimes those small remnants become a bridge between strangers separated by generations. Perhaps that is the quiet magic of old books. They remind us that we are all, in one way or another, leaving pieces of ourselves behind. And when those pieces are found, we are remembered.

Somewhere between ancient seas and a library shelf, a child’s name continues its journey across time.

Here are some additional copies of The Odyessy in Spencer’s holdings:

• Homeri Odysseae libri VIII. Francisco Florido Sabine interprete [Homer’s Odyssey, Books 1-8, translated into Latin by Francisco Florido], 1545 (Call Number: Summerfield C236).
• The Odyessy of Homer, translated into English by Alexander Pope, 1725 (Call Number: D711).
• Tes tou Homerou Odysseias, in ancient Greek, 1758 (Call Number: G50).
• The Odyssey of Homer, translated into English by Alexander Pope, 1811 (Call Number: A586).
• The Odyssey of Homer, translated into English by Alexander Pope, 1817 (Call Number: C22294).
• The Odyessy of Homer, translated into English by Alexander Pope, with an introduction by Carl Van Doren, 1931 (Call Number: E3157).
• The Odyssey of Homer, translated into English by T. E. Lawrence, 1932 (Call Number: D440).
• The Odyssey of Homer: Newly Translated into English Prose by T. E. Shaw [T. E. Lawrence], 1933 (Call Number: C17090).

Meredith Phares
Operations Manager

Watch the unboxing of our newest medieval manuscript to adorn the shelves of Kenneth Spencer Research Library below!

Every year at Kenneth Spencer Research Library, through classes, tours, and events, hundreds of undergraduates, graduate students, professors, and visitors from the public get to touch, handle, and engage with our single most popular book: the Vosper Book of Hours (Call Number: Pryce MS C1), a manuscript written painstakingly by hand in the last decades of the 15th century, gleaming with gold and vivid illustrations of medieval scenes from the Bible to accompany the hourly prayers contained within, each page crammed with flourishing decorations in the margins.

But the “verso” to those sparkling memories, if you will, is the stress that such high-touch handling can place on the single most-used book in the building. In 2025, we pulled the Vosper Hours from its cozy home in our vault thirty-four times, more than once every two weeks. In total, it was viewed by over 600 people, though directly handled by some fewer. Medieval manuscripts are often shockingly robust, made from parchment that has withstood the test of time, but even the halest of manuscripts will strain from so many hands upon its pages.

And so, with an eye to continuing to preserve the longevity of our most-beloved Vosper Hours, I set about finding it a mate, something that could lighten its burden and share the yolk of labor the way the best spouse might, meeting its standards but not exceeding them, lest it simply replace the Vosper Hours as the more popular manuscript and reintroduce the risk of over-use.

The process of threading such a needle involved meeting and corresponding with various booksellers, domestic and international, who specialize in medieval manuscripts in order to get a full sense of the current market and available options. I discussed with them our goals for such an acquisition, as well as our limitations, explaining how we expected and hoped the manuscript might be used, and why we sought particular qualities. These booksellers then sent us offers of the manuscripts in their catalogs that they felt best fit our goals, and I in turn analyzed and evaluated those offerings, including corresponding with various KU teaching faculty, to gather their thoughts on the potential opportunities for instruction and research use of the manuscript. From those conversations and analyses, one candidate rose to the top.

And so, without further ado, meet our newest manuscript:

The very first moment unboxing the manuscript upon its arrival here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library!

Behold, Pryce MS D1. We’ve given her the rather lengthy title Prima dies mensis et septima truncat vt ensis, using the incipit (or the first line of the text), since most medieval manuscripts lack a formal title. Her catchier nickname will likely be the pithy “Book of Hours, Use of Sarum” to reflect that her contents are structured around the pattern of prayers for the Office of the Virgin Mary in Salisbury (or “Sarum”), England. Despite her English nickname, she hails from Bruges, Belgium, a center of book production in the fifteenth century, where she was almost certainly illuminated in a professional workshop known as the “Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht.” They are best known for their work on a manuscript of theologian Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla in Prophetas now held at the University of Utrecht (Ms. 252), but only twenty-six manuscripts survive today that include their art.

She’s more than just a pretty face, too: every unique attribute of the manuscript can reveal different aspects of history, of how we’ve used books and information over time to express ideas and identities, control trade, and more.

For example: this is an unusually hefty volume, especially for a Book of Hours. These books were designed to be easy to keep at hand so that the owner could carry it with them and pray at set hours of the day (hence “Book of Hours”). Most are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, or perhaps a little larger. Books of Hours flourished as a genre among the laity (non-clergy) in the later Middle Ages and often became a status symbol, flaunting opulent consumption and wealth. Nobles and members of the rising merchant classes could purchase luxury Books of Hours custom designed for their personal tastes, with pigments sourced from precious gems like ultramarine, metals such as lead white and copper verdigris, and above all gold leaf.

Books of Hours this large are uncommon, excessive in their opulence and sacrificing any pretense of practicality. In a visiting class, we might ask students why an owner would sacrifice ease of use for the grandiosity of its size, inviting them to reflect on how books are used not only as texts, but as physical objects.

Another example: The manuscript’s international birth and ownership. Dating a manuscript and identifying its place of origin can often present a challenge, and scholars will resort to complex analyses of handwriting and art styles to justify their conclusions. Not so for this manuscript: each miniature is marked by a faint red stamp of “B” that proclaim its origins courtesy of a law implemented in 1427 that required illuminators who sold their artwork to identify it as a local product, in an effort to control the import of luxury illuminations. Meanwhile, the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht likely left Bruges in 1436, and so we can confidently date our new manuscript down to a single decade. Those stamps testify to the vibrant ongoing trade in luxury manuscripts – and the efforts to control the production of books and art not only as information but as economic and cultural products – in the 15th century.

And while the manuscript was made in Bruges, it didn’t remain there for long. Despite its Belgian origins, it was likely made with an English owner in mind, as many of the prayers included in the Book were particularly popular in England. We know that’s where it found its home: a note added in a later hand states it was gifted to John Pullan by his uncle Richard Belasyse in the 16th century, again harkening to how information and art were traded over borders for profit.

Indeed, quite a few owners took their hand to this manuscript, tweaking, correcting, fixing, and editing it to suit their tastes and preferences over the centuries. The earliest patron who originally commissioned the manuscript, most likely, went so far as to amend the miniature of Saint Mary Magdalene shown below, painting over her ointment pot and adding in a scroll that labels her instead as “Saint Anne,” hinting that the patron may have intended to give it as a gift to someone named Anne and decided to fit her patron saint into the prayers. This, in turn, reflects the popularity of Books of Hours among women in the later Middle Ages, revealing the reading habits, literacy and book ownership of women that is otherwise often hidden.

Someone, perhaps that same Anne or her own child, added a note of the birth of Thomas Bentham on October 24, 1477, reflecting how the calendars of Saints’ Days in Books of Hours were often used to track family births since the book would be passed from parent to child over generations.

And the mark of the English Protestant Reformation is revealed through another, later owner who crossed out the names of English Catholic Saint Thomas Becket and the Pope, adding the note “vacat” (“empty” or “blank”) next to feast days. The owner either converted (or wished to appear that they had converted), or the manuscript fell into Protestant hands.

More than one hand has tried to repair damage to its pages, suggesting that the manuscript had at least one rough owner. Some holes in the vellum have been sewn together carefully with thread, but another, likely later, owner seems to have fixed cuts to some pages with an adhesive, though why or how the pages were cut is unclear. At some point the book was rebound into a lush and ostentatious velvet binding, into which William Alfred Westropp Foyle (1885-1963) added his bookplate.

All those changes and adaptations demonstrate how books rarely remain static as they’re handed down from parent to child or bought and sold and shipped this way and that. People change their books the way they change their information, adapting it to their needs, aesthetic preferences, religious devotions, and even idle whims.

Now it makes another home here on the shelves of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, and we’ve already added a touch of our own: a custom-fit box built to the best standards of conservation care. Here, it will make another life for itself and touch the hearts and imaginations of hundreds of students, visitors, and researchers while giving our Vosper Hours much-needed relief for its own use. Like all the books on our shelves, it is available for any and all to come and see in tours and showcases, in classes and instruction, and above all in our Reading Room.

Eve Wolynes
Special Collections Curator

Good luck to all Kansas law school graduates who are taking the bar exam next week! In honor of the occasion, we’re sharing the first two parts of the first Kansas bar exam, which was administered in Topeka on October 13-14, 1903, and later published in the Summary of the First Year’s Work of the State Board of Law Examiners. The Board’s first three annual reports – which include the bar exams administered during those years – can be found in Spencer’s collections (Call Number: RH C5864), although they are housed at the Annex and must requested ahead of a Reading Room visit.

The general guidance to “follow instructions in the Bulletin of Information to Applicants” included in the first exam was replaced by more specific instructions in the second (February 1904) exam: “The Board calls special attention to the fact that answers ‘yes’ and “no” will not be considered. In every case give the principles involved and the reasons for the answer. ” This statement was repeated for the third exam in June 1904, and additional clarification was added: “Write your answers plainly, on one side of the paper only, and guard your spelling and punctuation. Accuracy, clearness, and conciseness will be given weight.”

More details about the first bar exam can be found in the paper “The State Board – A Landmark in Lawyer-making” by Lucius H. Perkins, D. C. L., secretary of the Kansas Board. Perkins presented the paper at the first national conference of the State Boards of Law Examiners, which was held at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. It was reprinted – “by request” – in the Board’s Second Annual Report (1904-1905). Perkins noted that applicants who had been “admitted to the highest courts of another jurisdiction and actually practiced for more than three years immediately preceding their application” were tested via an oral examination. Beyond that,

“all other examinations are in writing. We proposed eighty questions, divided into four sessions of three hours each [across two days]. We require a few definitions and ask a few categorical questions; but by far the greater number are hypothetical, and are intended to raise the ordinary questions that might be put to a lawyer any day. We ask no catch [trick] questions, nor any of extraordinary difficulty. Our aim is to test the applicant’s mental caliber as well as his knowledge of the law, and we give good credit for a brainy answer even though the solution be wrong…

At the beginning of an examination the clerk of the supreme court [sic] gives each applicant a number, with which he signs all his papers. The board does not know one from another, and each performance is passed upon solely on [sic] its merits. This impersonal method relieves the board from every suspicion of partiality.”

Newspaper coverage of the first Kansas bar exam. Left: The Topeka Daily Capital, October 9, 1903. Middle: Capper’s Weekly: The Kansas Semi-Weekly Capital, October 13, 1903. Right: The Topeka Daily Herald, October 15, 1903. All articles accessed via Newspapers.com. Click images to enlarge.

Additionally in his paper, Perkins describes the process by which individuals applied to take the bar exam, commenting that “the methods adopted by the Kansas board are in accord with the most advanced thought and the most successful experience in this work.”

“We furnish each applicant a regular set of printed forms, consisting of an application, affidavit of the applicant, affidavit of his preceptor, and a certificate of the local district judge and three practicing attorneys that he is a person of good moral character, and, if qualified, a suitable person to be admitted to the bar. We also send a copy of the rules and a bulletin of information. The applicant is required to frame his petition to the supreme court [sic], and it must be in his own handwriting. He files his petition in the office of the clerk of the supreme court, and sends a copy of it with all his other papers to the secretary of the board. In the application he gives his history, and especially the character of his education, the studies pursued, and what he has been doing for the past five years.

One of the most important requirements is that he give a satisfactory account of himself, and no man will be received in the examination if there is any cloud upon his character. We cannot reach the rascals who are already in, but the State Board of Law Examiners stands between [unscrupulous attorneys] and the lawyers of the future. We cannot catch them all, but we shall stop those whose rascality is already known.

Our requirements of preliminary education are equal to a four-year course in a standard high school. No diploma, ipso facto, admits the applicant to the examination. We reserve the right to determine what schools shall be accredited, and a diploma from a law school does not excuse the applicant from the preliminary examination, unless the standard of admission is up to the standard of the board. All applicants are examined. Graduates from our own or any other university or law school are not exempt.”

Readers, do you have a favorite question from the first Kansas bar exam?

Caitlin Klepper
Public Engagement Librarian

Poetry is occasionally seen as a “sillier” form of writing due to its limited boundaries and subjective meanings. However, as a form of revolution and rebellion, it remains a constant in the zeitgeist of American literary movements. By highlighting a handful of Special Collections material published by Beat poets, a fellow Kansan, and a Slavic studies scholar, I hope to shine a bit more light on the impactful messaging that came from different, often subversive, poetry collections! 

The first work published in this list, Daisy Aldan’s A New Folder (1959) expresses the desire to reflect American poets’ complicated identity through their writing. The thematic subject for this collection is explained by Wallace Fowlie in his foreword. Fowlie writes that the book testifies to the “continuing vitality of American poetry” (1). With only the common thread of nationality, each poem in this collection provokes Fowlie’s quote: “The artists of a society are its only individuals, and society, by nature and definition, is opposed to individuals” (1). Complemented by American abstract artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, A New Folder pinpoints an incredibly specific time in Western art and culture. A product of Beat Generation ideals, the volume concentrates anti-conformist beliefs in relation to human expression and creation through the use of art and poetry.  

Composed and published by David Rattray, Lami (1965) memorializes the life of Alden Van Buskirk through a compilation of his poetry, which explores life in fragments leading up to his death in 1961. In his introduction, Allen Ginsberg describes the collection as a “whole witty­ – somber – book” that “consists of 91 pages and makes a complete statement of Person” (1). The reader is given a collection that feels raw and intimate as the posthumous publication reflects a beloved figure in the Beatnik subculture of the ’60s. The title is accompanied by many definitions as “Lami” is cited to mean “tenement elf but above all guiding genie”; “American lama descended from golden age ‘lambish folke’”; and “also l’ami” (Rattray, Table of Contents). Marked as a collection of poetry that encapsulates one man’s being, Van Buskirk’s mortality and the thematic presence of grief for one’s own life finds a certain intimacy within Lami that holds through to the end.  

The front cover of (left) and the first page of the poem “Abomunist Manifesto” in (right) Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness by Bob Kaufman, 1965. Call Number: LE 1965 B16. Click images to enlarge.

A personal favorite of mine from Spencer’s collection, Bob Kaufman’s Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965) is a tribute to social protest and, as the title suggests, the fight of the lonely subject amongst a crowd. Held at the back of Solitudes Crowded is a broadside of Kaufman’s “Abomunist Manifesto,” which appropriates the Communist Manifesto. Kaufman modifies the language of Marx and Engels with provocative, humorous statements designed to reflect his own radicalism within the counterculture of the 1960s. An “abomunist” is defined by Kaufman as a noun meaning “one who avows Abomunism, disavowing everything else, especially butterscotch” (81). Accompanying political rhetoric, the collection is rich with Kaufman’s “prophetic verse” in which he was known to have written with inspiration “from the improvisatory bebop jazz featured at the Beats’ favorite North Beach watering holes” [1]. The absurdity of Kaufman’s writing subverts expectation as he dedicates himself to the protest of a societal collective. 

The front cover (left) and section (right) of RADI OS by Ronald Johnson, 1977. Call Number: C23084. Click images to enlarge.

Comparatively a much less political piece than the previous examples, Ronald Johnson’s RADI OS (1977) uses abstract design for the art and structure of his poetry. Erasure poetry is made by taking an already written text and erasing the words to create new poetry. As one of the earliest poets to create erasure poetry – one with Kansas roots, no less – Johnson takes John Milton’s Paradise Lost and transforms its text to express his own thematic subject and purpose. The genius of Johnson’s originality and meaning are enforced by Guy Davenport’s afterword, with its notes on the complex and thoughtful use of negative space and the ordering of each page. A particularly favorite insight of mine that Davenport says in his afterword: “What the artist seems to create has, as the artist is the first to appreciate and acknowledge, already been created. Design and arrangement are the artist’s passion. Place is all” (96). Davenport’s words ring true throughout this list, finding creation as a backbone to what makes an artist, and how that creation translates into meaning whether that is political, personal, or both.  

Finally, at first glance McClelland’s 1978 collection dedicated wholly to the existence of a brooding, bloodsucking myth has a comedic air to it. The 21st-century vampire has become more of an angsty, sparkling romantic lead than the seductive, psychological, and aristocratic figure that erupted from authors like Polidori, Le Fanu, and Stoker. Published in 1978 and prefaced by Robert Kelly, The Dracula Poems conceptualize the identity of “poet” as a vampire/monster who is uniquely open to interpretation by language. McClelland’s background in Slavic studies with a concentration in anthropology as well as linguistics offers more to every poem as they attempt to convey metaphorical wonderings of a monster “preserved and isolated at once” in the literary canon [2]. Still remaining an enjoyable and creative collection of well-crafted poetry, McClelland’s book suffuses a popular figure with identity, making the vampire a much more personal beast.  

Theo McKay
Public Services student assistant

[1] Biography of Bob Kaufman by the Academy of American Poets  

[2] Bruce A. McClelland’s website