Papers of Kathleen Fraser (1935-2019), American poet, teacher and scholar. Influenced by the experimental poets of the New York School in the 1960s, Fraser became a prolific poet, an advocate of innovative women's writing, and a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. The collection contains correspondence with prominent poets and scholars; manuscript and typescript drafts of Fraser's published and unpublished poetry and prose; administrative and production materials related to the literary magazine HOW(ever); interviews with Fraser; teaching materials; sound and video recordings; and digital media.
Kathleen Fraser Papers, 1909-2019 (MSS 529)
Extent: 43 Linear feet (104 archives boxes, 3 card file boxes, 1 tube, and 4 oversize folders), + 90 GB of digital files
Digital Content
The collection contains a small number of individually described digital files, in addition to a large series of files (Series 23: DIGITAL MEDIA) that contains the content of one hard drive, one iBook G4 laptop, and one flash drive.
Kathleen Joy Fraser was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1935 and attended high school in Covina, California. After discovering the work of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman and e.e. cummings while a student at Occidental College, Fraser decided to major in English literature and began to write her own poetry. She graduated in 1959 and moved to New York City where she developed her skills as a poet in workshops with Kenneth Koch and Robert Lowell at the New School for Social Research and with Stanley Kunitz at the Poetry Center at the YMHA.
In Kunitz's poetry workshop, Fraser met her first husband, poet Jack Marshall, whom she married in 1960. Their son David was born in 1966, and they soon relocated to San Francisco. Fraser also used the name Kathleen Fraser Marshall during her marriage. In 1969, they were both offered teaching positions at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. After their separation in 1970, Fraser became director of the Poetry Center (1972-1975) and professor of creative writing (1972-1992) at San Francisco State University. In addition to teaching poetry workshops and seminars, she founded the American Poetry Archives and compiled a video anthology featuring women poets entitled Women Working in Literature (1992).
Responding to the need for a place to discuss women's language issues and to publish experimentalist poetry by women, Fraser founded the journal HOW(ever). From 1983 to 1992, Fraser published the work of living women poets and recovered the neglected work of modernist women poets such as H.D., Mina Loy, and Mary Butts. Fraser continued this investigation into innovative women's writing through the online journal How2 which she edited from 1999 to 2000. Fraser handed over the position as editor-in-chief to Australian scholar Ann Vickery in 2001 to allow more time for her own writing.
Fraser has published many volumes of poetry, including: Change of Address and Other Poems (1966); In Defiance (of the Rains) (1969); Little Notes to You, From Lucas Street: Poems 1970-1971 (1972); What I Want (1974); New Shoes (1978); Each Next: Narratives (1980); Something (even human voices) in the foreground, a lake (1984); Notes Preceding Trust (1987); boundayr (1987); From a Text (1993); When New Time Folds Up (1993); Wing (1995); il cuore: The Heart, Selected Poems 1970-1995 (1996); h i dde violeth i dde violet (2003); Discrete Categories Forced into Coupling (2004); ii ss (with Hermine Ford) (2011); and movable TYYPE (2011). Selections from her work were recorded on Even Human Voices (1986). She has also published a collection of critical essays, Translating the Unspeakable: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity (2000).
Fraser's poetry has been published in numerous journals and magazines since the late 1950s, and she has given readings and talks on poetry across the United States, as well as in Italy and Japan. Her poetry is characterized by a technically sophisticated deconstruction of language that is highly innovative. In addition to displaying her technical skill, Fraser's poetry is also intensely emotional, meditative, playful, and lyrical. Fraser divided her time between San Francisco and Rome with her second husband, the philosopher and playwright Arthur K. Bierman, whom she married in 1985. Fraser died on February 5, 2019 in Emeryville, California.
The Kathleen Fraser Papers document the literary and professional career of a prolific poet, advocate of innovative women's writing and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. Materials include correspondence with prominent poets and scholars, manuscript and typescript drafts of Fraser's published and unpublished poetry and prose; administrative and production materials related to the literary magazine HOW(ever); interviews with Fraser; teaching materials; sound and video recordings, and digital media.
Accession Processed in 2002
Arranged in nine series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) HOW(EVER) MATERIALS, 3) WRITINGS BY FRASER, 4) WRITINGS BY OTHERS, 5) TEACHING MATERIALS, 6) CONFERENCES, 7) INTERVIEWS WITH/BY AND ARTICLES ON FRASER, 8) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS, and 9) RECORDINGS.
Accession Processed in 2007
Arranged in eight series: 10) CORRESPONDENCE, 11) HOW2 ONLINE JOURNAL MATERIALS, 12) WRITINGS BY FRASER, 13) TEACHING MATERIALS, 14) CONFERENCES, 15) INTERVIEWS WITH/BY FRASER AND ARTICLES ON FRASER, 16) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS, and 17) SOUND RECORDINGS.
Accessions Processed in 2019-2020
Arranged in six series: 18) BIOGRAPHICAL, 19) CORRESPONDENCE, 20) WRITINGS, 21) PHOTOGRAPHS, 22) SOUND RECORDINGS, and 23) DIGITAL MEDIA.