Call Number: ARC.015
Extent: 5.76 Linear feet, in four record cartons. one manuscript box, and one oversize box.
The Brooklyn Poetry Circle collection contains records and other materials related to the activities of the Brooklyn Poetry Circle and its individual members. The collection includes minutes, correspondence, and membership lists, as well as printed material created for or generated by its member activities (including programs, flyers, tickets, printed anthologies, and newspaper clippings). The collection also contains a very large number of poems written by members of the Circle, the majority of which are undated, and a significant number of which are unsigned. These poems generally date from the 1940s and 1950s, and many bear the handwritten emendations and suggestions of the Circle’s official critic, Gertrude Ryder Bennett. Gabrielle Lederer, a long-term member of the Circle who served as its secretary throughout the 1960s and 1970s, compiled extensive scrapbooks documenting the life of the group, which form the largest series in the collection.
The Brooklyn Poetry Circle was founded in 1935 by Marie-Louise d’Esternaux, Maude Clark Hough, and Laura Spofford Wiltsie Lake. d’Esternaux’s parents, Countess Ethelyn d’Esternaux and Count Max d’Esternaux, were active members of several artistic societies, and became especially close friends with the poet Edwin Markham. Markham encouraged the society and actively promoted it until his death in 1940. Other established poets also participated in the society during its early years and helped to define its aesthetic, the most well known being Maude Clark Hough and Anna Hempstead Branch, poets whose work is characterized by the use of simple ballad meters and by the predominance of traditional religious and family themes. The aesthetic defined in the Circle changed little over time. The Poetry Circle promoted and admired formalist poetic techniques, as well as poems with religious themes, until its dissolution in the late 1990s. The group’s regular activities included two major annual events, a spring luncheon and a Christmas party. In the early years of the Circle, members often attended various cultural events around New York City, and participated in the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The Circle also held monthly meetings, generally in the home of one of the members. Each month a poetic theme was assigned, and each member would submit a poem to the official critic several weeks before the meeting. For many years during the 1940s and 1950s, the critic was Gertrude Ryder Bennett, an author notable for writing many books and poems about the history of Brooklyn. Most active members of the circle joined in the relatively early years of the institution’s history and remained members throughout their lives. During the 1980s and 1990s, very few people applied for membership, and the aging Circle members voted to disband in 1997.
Names:
- Bennett, Gertrude Ryder
- Branch, Anna Hempstead, 1875-1937
- D’Esternaux, Marie-Louise
- Hough, Maude Clark
- Lederer, Gabrielle
- Lilly, Othelia, 1908-
- Markham, Edwin, 1852-1940
- Palen, Jennie M.
- Brooklyn Poetry Circle
Places:
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) — Intellectual life
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) — Social life and customs
Subjects:
- American literature — Societies, etc.
- American poetry
- American poetry — Periodicals
- American poetry — Appreciation
- American poetry — Women authors
- American poetry — New York (State) — Kings County
- Clubs — New York (State) — Kings County
- Poets
- Poets — Poetry
- Poets, American — Correspondence
Types of material:
- Annotations
- Books
- Clippings (information artifacts)
- Correspondence
- Magazines (periodicals)
- Membership lists
- Minutes
- Photographs
- Poetry
- Printed ephemera
- Scrapbooks
- Small press books