Major Collections
The major collections of Carl Rakosi’s papers are located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; the University of California, San Diego (held in Mandeville Special Collections); the University of Texas, Austin (as part of the Harry Ransom Humanities Center); and the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Rakosi Papers at UW-Madison
Finding Aid
There is not currently an online finding aid for this collection. I have digitized the UW-Madison’s printed finding aid and am reproducing it here, with permission.
Online Availability
In August 2015, I received permission from the Rakosi estate to digitize and make publicly available all of the material in this collection for which the estate held the copyright. The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Special Collections began work on that digitization project in December 2016, and expect to make the material fully available on the UWDCC site by Spring 2018.
Rakosi Papers at UCSD
The collection contains correspondence, prose, poems, book reviews, and extensive interviews with Rakosi, as well as journal articles, case histories and notes that document his work as a psychotherapist during the decades when he withdrew from the publishing world. Included are typescripts and photocopies of poems for The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi and page proofs for The Old Poet’s Tale (1999). The collection represents the part he played as a young poet in the Objectivist movement, with copies of correspondence with other Objectivist poets such as Louis Zukofsky, and essays written by Rakosi much later on the impact of that literary moment, such as “The Objectivist Connection” which explains the origin of the term “Objectivist.” The collection contains worksheets for poems, audio and videocassette recordings of readings and interviews, and drafts of printed interviews.
Finding Aid
The UCSD libraries maintain a detailed finding aid for their Rakosi materials.
Online Availability
In November 2016, the director of Special Collections at UCSD received permission from the Rakosi estate to digitize and make publicly available any material in the Archive for New Poetry collection for which the estate held the copyright. Digitization plans are currently being negotiated.
Rakosi Papers at UT-Austin
Letters to and from Carl Rakosi appear in the Louis Zukofsky, Marianne Moore, Charles Tomlinson, and William Carlos Williams collections.
Finding Aid
There is no finding aid as such for Rakosi materials, as they consist of individual letters to and from Rakosi collected in various other writers’ collections.
Rakosi Papers at Harvard
The New Directions Publishing Corporation records at the Houghton library include six folders with correspondence from Carl Rakosi, as well as typescripts, galley, and manuscript copies of Rakosi’s books Amulet (1967) and Ere-Voice (1971), both of which were published by New Directions.
Literary Executor
The current executor for the estate of Carl and Leah Rakosi is Dan Nordby, their son-in-law.