This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.
This collection has no restrictions.
Much of this material came from submissions to the literary magazine "Voyages" and includes correspondence between Claire and Mark and Dorothy Van Doren. There are also works by Robert Lax, Allen Tate, John Taglibue relating to Mark Van Doren.
This collection is arranged in six series.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.
This collection has no restrictions.
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); William F. Claire Collection on Mark Van Doren; Box and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Accruals are not expected
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
2017.2018.M011: Source of acquisition--Second Life Books. Method of acquisition--Purchase; Date of acquisition--7/21/2017.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Papers processed, ptl 07/31/2017.
2017-08-01 File created.
2019-05-20 EAD was imported spring 2019 as part of the ArchivesSpace Phase II migration.
William F. Claire was born in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1935. Claire graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1954 and received his bachelor's degree in 1958 from Columbia University. He studied at Georgetown University before joining the military. Claire also worked for the Pentagon, as well as in various public and private jobs in Washington DC early in his career. A notable writer and poet in his own right, Claire founded the literary magazine "Voyages" in 1967. Since its inception"Voyages" has won a number of awards including a National Endowment for the Arts award. Claire's work has been published in "The American Scholar," "Antioch Review," "New York Times," "Smithsonian Magazine," "The Poetry Pilot" of the Academy of American Poets, as well as numerous other major publications. His poems have also been recorded for the Library of Congress archives. Honors include winning a Rockefeller Foundation Grant for residency in Belagio, Italy and he is a Yaddo and MacDowell scholar. Claire currently lives in both Lewes, Delaware and Naples, Florida, and is the owner of an antiquarian art and book business. Biographical information from The Quotations page on William Claire.
Box 1 Folder 1
Booth is responding to Claire's sending him the Mark Van Doren tribute issue. (Voyages: Vol. V numbers I-IV, 1973). Booth notes that he did not know of the issue when it came out. Booth was born in 1925 in Hanover, New Hampshire. He attended Dartmouth College, where he studied with Robert Frost; he received his B.A. in 1947. He subsequently received an M.A. from Columbia University. Booth was an instructor and professor of English and of creative writing at Dartmouth College, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and at Syracuse University. He was one of the founders of the Creative Writing program at Syracuse. Booth's poetry was published in many periodicals including "The New Yorker", "The Atlantic Monthly", "The American Poetry Review", "Poetry", and "Denver Quarterly". He published 10 poetry collections and one book about writing poetry and received numerous awards for his work
Box 3 Folder 1
Box 1 Folder 2
(with clipping)
Box 3 Folder 2
Box 3 Folder 3
Box 3 Folder 4
(With Biographical sketch of William Claire and Mark Van Doren)
Box 3 Folder 5
Box 3 Folder 6
Box 3 Folder 7
Box 3 Folder 8
Box 3 Folder 9
Box 3 Folder 10
Box 3 Folder 11
Box 3 Folder 12
Box 3 Folder 13
(Written on the cover of "Yes: A Magazine of Poetry"
Box 3 Folder 14
Box 3 Folder 15
Box 3 Folder 16
Box 3 Folder 17-18
Box 3 Folder 19
Box 3 Folder 20
Box 3 Folder 21-23
Box 3 Folder 24
Box 3 Folder 25-26
Box 3 Folder 27
Box 3 Folder 28
Box 3 Folder 29
Box 3 Folder 30
Box 3 Folder 31
Box 3 Folder 32
Box 1 Folder 3
(1 ALS; 2TLS; 2 postcard)
Box 3 Folder 33
Box 3 Folder 39-40
(With "How Praise A World" music)
Box 1 Folder 4
(With a copy of Poetry Pilot, April, 1978 by The Academy of American Poetry)
Box 1 Folder 5
(Concerning the Mark Van Doren issue of Voyages)
Box 3 Folder 34-36
Box 1 Folder 6
Box 1 Folder 7
Box 1 Folder 8
Box 1 Folder 9
Box 1 Folder 10
(Autograph note on a printed notice on "the consumption of brooms" by the US Tariff Commission)
Box 1 Folder 11
Box 3 Folder 37-38
Box 3 Folder 41
(Photocopies)
Box 1 Folder 12
Box 1 Folder 12
Box 3 Folder 42
Box 3 Folder 43-44
Box 3 Folder 45
Box 3 Folder 46
Box 3 Folder 47-49
Box 3 Folder 50
Box 1 Folder 17
(Autograph Manuscript Signed. (1999). 21 lines in the author's holograph on a single 8-1/2 x 11 in. sheet. A fine copy. This poem, to Mark Van Doren was supposed to have been published in the "Voyages" Mark Van Doren issue but arrived too late to be included. Not sure if it has been published)
Box 1 Folder 21
(Two pages on quarto musical composition paper, text and music written in pencil. (ca 1973). Not signed.
This puts to music the first stanza of the poem by Mark Van Doren. The first page of this was reprinted in the 1973 Mark Van Doren tribute issue of the magazine "Voyages" . The piece was performed by Brubeck at the memorial service for Mark Van Doren in New York City)
Box 1 Folder 18
(17 lines in holograph on a PAX magazine stationary.
A poem that was probably written for the Mark Van Doren issue of "Voyages" but did appear there. Unpublished? A convert to Roman Catholicism, the American poet Robert Lax (1915-2000), was a friend of the Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton. A student of Mark Van Doren, he and Thomas Merton were also influenced by their friend Ad Reinhardt. In his later years Robert Lax chose to live as a hermit on the island of Patmos in Greece where, in a quest for simplicity, he became a leading figure in literary minimalism)
Box 1 Folder 19
(Typed Manuscript (unsigned).17 lines (Page 3 only, edges of sheet chipped))
Box 1 Folder 20
(Autograph Manuscript (unsigned). (ca 1973). 15 lines in holograph on this paper. This poem that was written for the Mark Van Doren issue of "Voyages" (Issue 14/15, 1973) and appeared on page 48)
Box 1 Folder 23
(Typed poem: 13 lines (December 14, 1972-thinking of my great teacher Mark Van Doren))
Box 1 Folder 22
(1 page with holograph title, some ink corrections in the text. [ca 1973]. 19 lines, with 3 ink corrections.
Accompanied by a holograph note, in full: "3/22/73 | Dear Bill | Here's the review, with | a brief introduction | There will be many | pages about Mark in the | book I am writing. | yrs. | A. T." These were directed to editor and poet William Claire whose magazine "Voyages" published a tribute issue to Mark Van Doren in 1973. The Manuscript here listed was printed on page 23 of the special issue and was followed by a reprinting of Tate's review of "Very Much At Ease in Formal Attire" Van Doren's collected poems. The two pieces are here offered together
John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 -- February 9, 1979) was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944. He began attending Vanderbilt University in 1918 where he met fellow poet Robert Penn Warren. Warren and Tate were invited to join a group of young Southern poets under the leadership of John Crowe Ransom; the group were known as the Fugitive Poets and later as the Southern Agrarians. Tate contributed to the group's magazine The Fugitive and to the agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand published in 1930 and this was followed in 1938 by Who Owns America? Tate also joined Ransom to teach at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Some of his notable students there included the poets Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell. Lowell's early poetry was particularly influenced by Tate's formalist brand of Modernism)
Box 1 Folder 13
(TMS, with holograph corrections and additions, 18 pages (photocopy))
Box 1 Folder 14
(TMS, with holograph corrections and additions, 25 pages (photocopy))
Box 1 Folder 15
(Typed manuscript, with holograph notes on the cover by Dorothy Van Doren and Charlie Van Doren, 15 pages)
Box 1 Folder 16
(TMs mock-up, with corrections throughout, 23 pages (With accompanying annotated envelope))
Box 1 Folder 24
Box 1 Folder 25
Box 1 Folder 26
Box 1 Folder 27
Box 4 Folder 4
Box 4 Folder 1
Box 4 Folder 2
Box 4 Folder 3
(Scirpt for radio. Telecast Chapter T-101 NBC network)
Box 4 Folder 5
Box 4 Folder 6
Box 4 Folder 7
Box 4 Folder 8
Box 4 Folder 9
Box 4 Folder 10
Box 4 Folder 11
Box 4 Folder 12
Box 1 Folder 28
Box 1 Folder 29
Box 1 Folder 30
(A speech delivered at the 275th anniversary of St. John's College Santa Fe New Mexico-August 8, 1971. Preface by Richard D. Weigle, Introduction by William F. Claire. [Santa Fe: NM] The Lightning Tress, Jene Lyon publisher, 1977)
Box 1 Folder 31
(Printed in black on light grey still paper. This reprints the poem "O World" by Van Doren and "from A Letter to Mark Van Doren" by poet and editor of Voyages William Claire.) (Accompanied by an annotated folder)
Box 1 Folder 32
(First Edition. Broadside, (11-1/2 x 16-3/4 in) printed in red on thin paper, folded into quarters, paper browned, tears to the folds) Two copies_
Box 4 Folder 13
Box 1
(Photo by Helen Bidwell (looks like computer printing) (With an autograph note from William Claire to Russell)
Box 1
(An excellent clear image, taken at the home of Jame Laughlin when Griffin was interviewing Van Doren. One of the other images, taken at the same time was published in Twelve Photographic Portraits (Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1973)
(John Howard Griffin (June 16, 1920 -- September 9, 1980) was an American journalist and author, He is best known for darkening his skin and journeying through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to experience segregation in the Deep South in 1959. He wrote about this experience in his 1961 book Black Like Me., 1920, 1961)
Box 4 Folder 14
Box 4 Folder 15
(Inscribed by Mark Van Doren to William F. Claire, 1/8/1971)
Box 4 Folder 16
Box 4 Folder 17
Box 2
(First Edition. Small 8vo, pp. 93. Frontis portrait. Cover little soiled, little nicked at the top of the spine, o/w VG. The author's copy, inscribed by Robinson on the end paper: "Mark's Copy | Given by | Edwin Arlington | Robinson | May 1927")
Box 2
Box 4 Folder 18
Box 4 Folder 19
(Mark Van Doren's poem "My Love Comes Walking" on page 34)
Box 4 Folder 20
Box 4 Folder 21
Box 4 Folder 22
Box 4 Folder 23
Box 4 Folder 24
Box 4 Folder 25
Box 4 Folder 26
Box 4 Folder 27
Box 4 Folder 28