Ransom Center Magazine

poetry

Cold War culture

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Erik Mortenson discusses his book Ambiguous Borderlands and the pervasiveness of shadow imagery in Cold War materials.

Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016) investigates the role shadows play in Cold War literary and popular texts. Informed by research at the Ransom Center, it examines Beat literature, postwar photography, film noir, Twilight Zone episodes, and more to explain why shadow imagery had such a hold on American imaginations in the mid-twentieth century. [Read more…] about Cold War culture

Harry Ransom Center acquires Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry collection

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The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin is now home to the Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry Collection. The collection was started in the early 1970s by Dean Echenberg, a flight surgeon during the Vietnam War who later became the director of disease control for the City of San Francisco during the first years of the AIDS crisis. [Read more…] about Harry Ransom Center acquires Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry collection

“The Attempt to Keep Day and Night Together”

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An interview with Dean F. Echenberg on his war poetry collection

The Ransom Center is the new home for the Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry collection, a collection of more than 6,500 volumes of poetry related to people’s experiences with war. The collection was begun in the early 1970s by Dr. Echenberg, a flight surgeon during the Vietnam War who later served as an emergency room staff physician in Detroit Receiving Hospital, worked in private family practice, and served as Director of Disease Control in San Francisco during the first years of the AIDS crisis. [Read more…] about “The Attempt to Keep Day and Night Together”

A nomad’s writing finds a home

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Q&A with Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje began his career as a poet but is best known as the author of the 1992 Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient, which was made into a critically-acclaimed motion picture. He was born in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in 1943; he moved to Canada at age 18. [Read more…] about A nomad’s writing finds a home

A newly identified work by writer and poet Fenton Johnson

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In the midst of research for The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door exhibition, my former colleague Molly Schwartzburg alerted me to an unpublished manuscript she had located in the collection of writer and editor Christopher Morley (known today for his novel Parnassus on Wheels and his work on the editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club). [Read more…] about A newly identified work by writer and poet Fenton Johnson