The Paulann Petersen Collection

The Paulann Petersen Collection, 1989-2013

Overview of the Collection

Creator: Petersen, Paulann
Title: The Paulann Petersen Collection
Dates: 1989-2013 (inclusive)
19892013
Quantity: 8 boxes, (3 cubic feet)
Collection Number: OLPb147PET
Summary: The collection includes poetry drafts and publications by the Oregon poet, Paulann Petersen.
Repository: Lewis & Clark College, Special Collections and Archives

Aubrey R. Watzek Library
615 S. Palatine Hill Rd.
Portland, OR
97219
Telephone: 5037687758
Fax: 5037687282
archives@lclark.edu
Access Restrictions: This collection has no restrictions and is open for research.
Languages: English

Biographical NoteReturn to Top

Paulann Petersen is a teacher and poet who served as the State of Oregon's Poet Laureate, 2010-2013. Petersen was a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, she serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the annual January Stafford Birthday Events.

Petersen is the author of a number of books of poetry including: The Wild Awake (Confluence Press); Blood-Silk (Quiet Lion Press); A Bride of Narrow Escape (Cloudbank Books), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; and Kindle (Mountains and Rivers Press); The Voluptuary (Lost Horse Press); and Understory (Lost Horse Press).

Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Poetry; The New Republic; Prairie Schooner; Poetry Northwest; Willow Springs; Notre Dame Review; Bellingham Review; and Wilderness Magazine. Credits in Oregon publications include Calyx; The Grove Review; Basalt; Burnside Review; Oregon English Journal; Windfall; VoiceCatcher; and Hubbub. Anthology credits include Long Journey, Contemporary Northwest Poets; A Fierce Brightness; Portland Lights; Deer Drink the Moon; Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass; From Here We Speak, An Anthology of Oregon Poetry; O Poetry! Oh Poesia! Poems of Oregon and Peru; and Florilegia. POETRY IN MOTION, which places poems on the Tri-met busses and lightrail cars in the Portland area, has featured her poems.

Paulann has given readings in hundreds of spots ranging from Powell’s City of Books to Osmania University in India, from Ross Ragland Theater in Klamath Falls to The Museum Hotel in Central Turkey, from Fishtrap House in Enterprise to the tiny Agness Library on the Rogue River, from the Corvallis Library to Newport’s Visual Arts Center.

Content DescriptionReturn to Top

Includes poem drafts, correspondence, and publications.

Use of the CollectionReturn to Top

Restrictions on Use

Permission to publish, exhibit, broadcast, or quote from materials in the Watzek Library Archives & Special Collections requires written permission of the Head of Archives & Special Collections.

Preferred Citation

The Paulann Petersen Collection (OLPb147PET), Lewis & Clark College Aubrey Watzek Library Archives & Special Collections, Portland, Oregon.

Administrative InformationReturn to Top

Arrangement

Arranged in a single series with groupings by book title.

Location of Collection

Special Collections

Acquisition Information

Donated to Lewis & Clark College by Paulann Petersen.

Future Additions

This collection will be supplemented periodically with new material from the author.

Processing Note

Processed in 2013.

Separated Materials

Books by Paulann Petersen are housed with the Special Collections Rare Books and catagued in the Watzek Library online catalog. Broadsides with poems by Paulann Petersen are housed with Special Collections poetry broadsides.

Detailed Description of the CollectionReturn to Top

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.

The Wild Awake , ca. 1996Return to Top

Container(s): Box 1

Drafts for poems published in the book The Wild Awake (2002). File titles are equivalent to the published poem titles except in a handful of cases which are explained in the notes for the folder entry.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
1.1	A Reading from the Erotic Compass of the World	undated
1.2	Not an Angel	undated
1.3	Timepiece	undated
1.4	Cloth	undated
1.5	Promise	undated
1.6	Merman	undated
1.7	Oriental Lilies	undated
1.8	Graveyard Narcissus	undated
1.9	Small Acts of Devotion	undated
1.10	Mirror of These Eyes	undated
1.11	A Bride of the World	undated
1.12	Speaking of Dreams	undated
1.13	Feral	undated
1.14	In Dreams	undated
1.15	What You Didn't Know About Money	undated
1.16	The Day I Became a Woman Early drafts titled "The Day Jesus Became a Woman"	undated
1.17	Then She Is the Garden	undated
1.18	Second Skin	undated
1.19	To Dream a Lover Away	undated
1.20	Perfume	undated
1.21	Snow Red	undated
1.22	A Natural History	undated
1.23	Room	undated
1.24	Lullaby	undated
1.25	A Little Primer on Sleep	undated
1.26	Haven	undated
1.27	Calling	undated
1.28	Where the Animal Goes When I Am Awake	undated
1.29	For the Love of Sleep	undated
1.30	Words Rise from Nowhere Else	undated
1.31	Fabrication	undated
1.32	Coat of Fur	undated
1.33	A Woman Remembers Water	undated
1.34	Where, Then Who You Are	undated
1.35	In Her Palm, Perfection	undated
1.36	Resolution	undated
1.37	Pity	undated
1.38	Work	undated
1.39	Making Do	undated
1.40	The New Cosmology	undated
1.41	Psychopomp	undated
1.42	Handwriting	undated
1.43	Translation	undated
1.44	Who Shadows the Sun	undated
1.45	The Same Worlds Within You As Without	undated
1.46	When I Walk	undated
1.47	Appetite	undated

Blood Silk , ca. 2003Return to Top

Container(s): Box 2

Drafts for poems published in the book Blood Silk (2003). File titles are equivalent to the published poem titles except in a handful of cases which are explained in the notes for the folder entry.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
2.1	[no title] early drafts titled "In Hospitality"; appears in Blood Silk without a title	undated
2.2	In the Narrow Margins	undated
2.3	Turkish for Hello	undated
2.4	A Calling	undated
2.5	The Nectar	undated
2.6	A Center of Gold	undated
2.7	Bouquet	undated
2.8	The Four Seasons, Istanbul	undated
2.9	Illumination	undated
2.10	Ecumenical	undated
2.11	Regeneration	undated
2.12	In This Land, Exotic	undated
2.13	Two Places I've Seen Mullein Grow	undated
2.14	Moonrise, Adiyaman	undated
2.15	Offering	undated
2.16	Customary	undated
2.17	For a Second Time on Today's Bus Ride	undated
2.18	Regular Issue	undated
2.19	The World, Rushing	undated
2.20	Grooming	undated
2.21	Gleaner	undated
2.22	Breakfast at the Caravansaray's Edge	undated
2.23	Night Shift	undated
2.24	In a Kurdish Village	undated
2.25	First Sight, Cappadocia	undated
2.26	Itinerary	undated
2.27	In Early Spring, Outside the Greatest Ottoman Architect's Masterpiece Mosque, Ken, in His Limited but Beautiful Turkish, Fends the Peddlers Off	undated
2.28	The Proselytizer	undated
2.29	Memento	undated
2.30	Aftermath	undated
2.31	To You, Aysegul	undated
2.32	At the Postal Worker's Flat, Nevsehir	undated
2.33	Place Setting	undated
2.34	After Dinner, Drinking Cay on Ermine's Small Balcony	undated
2.35	What Remains in the Byzantine Cave-Church	undated
2.36	Daybreak Ballooning, Cappadocia	undated
2.37	Speaking of Men, of Women, of Love	undated
2.38	Black Cave, Red Star	undated
2.39	To Unbury a Poet	undated
2.40	Here, In This Sky, Lay Me Down	undated

Kindle , ca. 2008Return to Top

Container(s): Box 3

Drafts, correspondence with the publisher (Mountains and Rivers Press), and proofs for the book, Kindle (2008). The eventual book included material for two different collections, Kindle and Seed. The two were consolidated into a single book titled Kindle.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
3.1	Kindle Typed draft submitted to Ce Rosenow.	May 15, 2005
3.2	Seed Typed draft submitted to Ce Rosenow.	May 16, 2005
3.3	Seed and Kindle contents pages	2005-2008
3.4	Kindle submissions Correspondence with Ce Rosenow and poem submissions.	November 10, 2005
3.5	Kindle poem submissions (after November 10, 2005) Poems and correspondence.	2005-2008
3.6	Kindle draft Assembled from page proofs for Kindle and Seed.	Fall 2006
3.7	Kindle page proofs	March 27, 2008
3.8	Kindle journal submissions Documentation of periodicals in which poems collected for Kindle were previously published.	undated
3.9	reviews of Kindle	undated
3.10	Correspondence about Kindle	2010-2011
3.11	Correspondence with publisher, Ce Rosenow	2005-2011

Kindle , ca. 2008Return to Top

Container(s): Box 4

Drafts for poems published in the book Kindle (2008).

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
4.1	Grounded	undated
4.2	Calendar	undated
4.3	As Fall Days Continue Their Onward Count	undated
4.4	Time-Travel	undated
4.5	Suture	undated
4.6	A Little Perspective	undated
4.7	Phantom Body	undated
4.8	Rorschach	undated
4.9	Dear Soul	undated
4.10	Carried From the Current	undated
4.11	Slake	undated
4.12	Finish	undated
4.13	A Legacy	undated
4.14	Dawn	undated
4.15	Water Knows Its Own Kind	undated
4.16	Vantage	undated
4.17	Basin	undated
4.18	Sense	undated
4.19	Half Empty, Half Full	undated
4.20	When Meeting the other	undated
4.21	Late Blooming	undated
4.22	Gather Close	undated
4.23	Narrative Description, Imaginative Leaps	undated
4.24	For Special Emphasis	undated
4.25	Ink	undated
4.26	Breugel's Babel	undated
4.27	On Seeing Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose	undated
4.28	Circus	undated
4.29	Charles Burchfield, Your World	undated
4.30	Slip Work	undated
4.31	Paper-Cutting Art	undated
4.32	Traveler	undated
4.33	A Cycladic Proof	undated
4.34	Moonrise, Asteria	undated
4.35	On the Aegean	undated
4.36	Navigation	undated
4.37	A Municipal Servant Serenades at the Pier	undated
4.38	Siren	undated
4.39	Rooms to Let Dream	undated
4.40	Phaethon's Warning	undated
4.41	Polar Flight	undated
4.42	Printed text of Kindle	2008

The Voluptuary , ca. 2010Return to Top

Container(s): Box 5

This box contains manuscript and drafts versions of the book The Voluptuary (2010). The earliest title for the book was The Body Eclectic.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
5.1	Paulann Petersen's handwritten journal journal in response to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days	July, 2000-August, 2001
5.2	drafts of poems from The Body Eclectic	August 2, 2001
5.3	Single draft sheet from The Body Eclectic	2001
5.4	from The Body Eclectic draft	September 3, 2001
5.5	The Body Eclectic draft	September-October, 2001
5.6	from The Body Eclectic draft	October 26, 2001
5.7	The Body Eclectic draft	undated
5.8	The Hyphenate World An assemblage of poems from The Body Eclectic.	2002
5.9	from The Body Eclectic draft	undated
5.10	from The Body Eclectic draft	June 2002
5.11	Something Made Room in This World An assemblage of drafts from The Body Eclectic.	ca. 2004
5.12	"Paulann Homage to Whitman" a collection of poems reviewed by Tess Gallagher and Greg Simon.	undated
5.13	Room in This World A draft assemblage of poems.	ca. 2004
5.14	Leaves Shed Out of Me A newly titled assemblage of poems from The Body Eclectic.	January 17, 2005
5.15	The Hermaphrodite Flower chapbook A subset of poems that were eventually incorporated into The Voluptuary. Proofs and the finished book.	September-October, 2005
5.16	A Work of the Body A newly titled assemblage of poems from The Body Eclectic.	January 17, 2007
5.17	The Voluptuary Typed draft.	January 8, 2008
5.18	Drafts not used in The Voluptuary	undated
5.19	The Voluptuary typed draft.	ca. 2009
5.20	Paulann Petersen, reviews, commentaries, The Voluptuary correspondence	ca. 2010
5.21	The Voluptuary finding aids and charts Charts documenting the various drafts and iterations of the poems in The Voluptuary. Created by students at Lewis & Clark College with the help of Paulann Petersen.	undated

The Voluptuary , ca. 2010Return to Top

Container(s): Box 6

Drafts for poems published in the book The Voluptuary (2010). Each folder includes copies of every draft, including the final typed version, of each poem in the book.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
6.1	Title page	undated
6.2	A Powder of Stars section epigraph	undated
6.3	Bloodline	undated
6.4	Why the World Isn't Flat	undated
6.5	Indigo	undated
6.6	Fennel	undated
6.7	This Could Be	undated
6.8	Since Most Stars Are Strangers	undated
6.9	What's Left From That First Goddess	undated
6.10	Atavist	undated
6.11	A Way to Say Gladness	undated
6.12	In February's Field	undated
6.13	What Remains	undated
6.14	In the Book of Waves	undated
6.15	Forever Forbidden to Wed	undated
6.16	In a Fleck of the Cosmos	undated
6.17	Skin	undated
6.18	Blind Abundance section epigraph	undated
6.19	Sky-Sower	undated
6.20	Doxology	undated
6.21	Ashes	undated
6.22	Ember	undated
6.23	Bright Song Bred in a Dark Throat	undated
6.24	Propagate	undated
6.25	Span	undated
6.26	The Light Connecting Each to All	undated
6.27	The Milky Way	undated
6.28	Be Here When I Can See You, When I Can't	undated
6.29	Among the Yet Unfallen	undated
6.30	The Hermaphrodite Flower section epigraph	undated
6.31	Nearness Called Forth	undated
6.32	Vantage	undated
6.33	One Soul	undated
6.34	Hermaphrodite	undated
6.35	Numen	undated
6.36	Reservoir	undated
6.37	Sounding-Bowl section epigraph	undated
6.38	Ark	undated
6.39	Fig	undated
6.40	Feeding Crows	undated
6.41	A Pinch of Your Ashes Mixed with Mother's	undated
6.42	Far	undated
6.43	For Continuance	undated
6.44	Silver and Deep	undated
6.45	Appear	undated
6.46	Abandon	undated
6.47	Yet Again I Name Aloud	undated
6.48	Gravity	undated
6.49	Death-Clothes	undated
6.50	Moonflower	undated
6.51	Whose Feet I'd Dry with my Hair	undated
6.52	To My Coffin Maker	undated
6.53	The Somewhere of Blue section epigraph	undated
6.54	Anthem	undated
6.55	Small Wonder	undated
6.56	Watermelon	undated
6.57	Solar Eclipse	undated
6.58	Heavenly Body	undated
6.59	Hive	undated
6.60	Wax	undated
6.61	Mend	undated
6.62	On the One True Way Out of This World	undated
6.63	Crescents	undated
6.64	Wick	undated
6.65	The Metamorph World	undated
6.66	Forest Sutra	undated
6.67	Crows Feeding on Crusted Snow	undated
6.68	Use	undated
6.69	Voluptuaries	undated

The Voluptuary , ca. 2010Return to Top

Container(s): Box 7

Miscellaneous materials relating to the publication of the book The Voluptuary (2010).

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
7.1	Charts and Correspondence Includes tables showing different titles and drafts for each poem. Compiled by Paul Merchant and students at Lewis & Clark College.	undated
7.2	The Voluptuary manuscript Complete typed manuscript	undated
7.3	The Voluptuary corrected proof Corrected page proofs.	2010
7.4	The Voluptuary final proof copy Trimmed pages on publication page stock with cover proof.	2010
7.5	drafts of essay about Paulann Petersen by Eric Muller	2010
7.6	handmade notebook with two poems Includes facsimiles of original drafts used for exhibit of "Leaves of Grass" and "Starting from Paumanok."	2010

Misc. Publications, 2010-2012Return to Top

Container(s): Box 8

Includes published materials featuring poems by Paulann Petersen.

Container(s)	Description	Dates
Box-Folder
8.1	Shimmer and Drone small chapbook of poems published by Imperfect Press.	2012
8.2	Hawthorne Bridge calendar contains the poem "Willamette Calendar".	2010

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

American poetry -- Oregon
Petersen, Paulann
Poetry

Personal Names

Petersen, Paulann--Archives

Titles within the Collection

Blood Silk
Kindle
The Voluptuary
The Wild Awake

Archives West Finding Aid

Table of Contents