ARCHIVE: Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress

[Ryan Goble]

Find Inspiration in Contemporary American Literature

Selections from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress are available to stream online for the first time—the launch of a project digitizing some of the Library’s 2,000 recordings from the past 75 years of literature. Most of the material comes from literary events at the Library of Congress or was captured in its Jefferson Building recording studio. Since 1943 the Library has hosted an annual Consultant in Poetry (since renamed the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry)—the first was Allen Tate; the current is Charles Wright—and these events and performances are coordinated under the consultant’s direction. While the audio archive represents an incredible resource of contemporary American literature, most of the recordings are found on magnetic tape reels that can only be listened to at the Library. In April 2015, 50 recordings were made accessible online. The material includes readings by former US Poet Laureates and Consultants Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as a 1971 lecture by Kurt Vonnegut, a 1984 talk by Ray Bradbury, a 1959 interview with Robert Frost and a reading by Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. Going forward, the Library will add five recordings on a monthly basis.

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