M.C. Kinniburgh. Wild Intelligence: Poets’ Libraries and the Politics of Knowledge in Postwar America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022. 224p. Paper, $28.95 (ISBN: 978-1625346551).

Abstract

The poet’s reading is integral to the poet’s writing. Yet the relative importance any particular subject material may hold in the poet’s work may appear elusive, often only to be revealed by way of keen-eyed archival digging. Thus, as M.C. Kinniburgh argues in Wild Intelligence: Poets’ Libraries and the Politics of Knowledge in Postwar America, “The poet’s library as an archival genre is just as significant a historical tool as literary papers” (48). Kinniburgh has multifaceted experience with such matters. As a former archivist and rare book librarian at New York Public Library, and now rare book dealer and small press publisher with Granary Books, she has witnessed how “institutional practices shape our expectations of the use and value of poets’ libraries, just as they shape our understanding of the archival materials and research collections that they house.”