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Martha Millet papers

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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206

This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.

Overview and metadata sections

Call Number:
Ms. Coll. 1226
Repository:
University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Extent:
8 linear feet (13 boxes)
Language:
English
Preferred Citation:
Martha Millet papers, 1920-1997, Ms. Coll. 1226, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
Date:
1920-1997 (inclusive)
Creator:
Millet, Martha
Form:
Correspondence, Audiovisual materials, Scrapbooks, Writings (documents), and Poetry
Abstract:
Martha Millet (1918-2004) was a poet and literary critic active in the Communist Party USA. Along with her second husband, noted pamphleteer and left-wing journalist Sender Garlin (1902-1999), she was a frequent contributor to Marxist, Communist, and left-leaning journals, and published several books of poetry. This collection includes 9 boxes of material related to her poetic and political writings. It contains most of her poetic and critical work in manuscript form; copies of journals and anthologies to which she contributed; scrapbooks assembled by Millet to commemorate her publications; documents from the Helsinki Peace Conference of 1955 which Millet attended; work by her husband, Sender Garlin, as well as a transcript of his FBI file; and works by others, including the transcripts of Ezra Pounds WWII era radio broadcasts, which Millet used to write a book attacking Pound's political thought.

Martha Millet was a poet, Marxist literary critic, and radical political activist. Born in the Bronx in 1918 to Russian immigrants, Millet was raised by her father, a founding member of the Communist Party USA, and became a member of the Young Communist League as a teenager. She married at nineteen, divorced, and in 1944 married her second husband, Sender Garlin, a well-known Marxist journalist and pamphleteer with whom she had two children. During the 1930s and 40s, Millet was a regular contributor to prominent Marxist periodicals, but after World War II the McCarthyite blacklists – as well as Millet's own opposition to the poetic and literary trends of the day - made it difficult for her to find an audience. Most of her manuscripts, including a revisionist history of Ezra Pound's sociopolitical perspective and Fascist radio broadcasts, were never published. She did succeed in publishing several books of poems: Thine Alabaster Cities (1952) and Dangerous Jack : a Fantasy in Verse (1953) – as well as a poetic anthology, The Rosenbergs: Poems of the United States (1957). Millet also found some success in China and the Soviet Bloc; while her Collected Poems never appeared in America, a Chinese translation appeared in 1957, and she was featured among other radical poets in a Czech anthology in 1959. She also carried on an active life as a teacher, especially at the Jefferson School for Social Science, an adult education institution in New York City supported by the Communist Party USA. During her later life, Millet and Garlin moved to Colorado, where they were active in political circles, and where Millet contributed columns and editorials to local newspapers.

This collection includes material related to Martha Millet's poetic, critical, and political work. It contains most of her poetic and critical work in manuscript form; copies of journals and anthologies to which she contributed; scrapbooks assembled by Millet to commemorate her publications; documents from the Helsinki Peace Conference of 1955, which Millet attended; work by her husband, political journalist Sender Garlin, as well as a transcript of his FBI file; and works by others, including the transcripts of Ezra Pound's WWII era radio broadcasts, which Millet used to write a book attacking Pound's political thought. It also includes a small but significant amount of correspondence between Millet and editors of prominent Marxist journals, as well as with the translator of the Chinese edition of her Collected Poems. The collection will be of particular interest to researchers looking for insight into the intersection between Marxist thought and poetic experimentation among Communist and left-leaning American writers during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and how these intersections played out within the thriving community of Marxist and Marxist-affiliated journals and magazines.

Sold by Bolerium Books, 2015.

Box 12 of this collection held microfilms of Ezra Pound transcripts of short wave broadcasts from Rome, 1941 Dec. 7-1943 July 25. The originals are held at the Library of Congress. They were published in 1977 in this collection: http://franklin.library.upenn.edu/record.html?id=FRANKLIN_455022. The microfilms in this collection were deaccession and box 12 no longer exists.

People
Subject

Publisher
University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Finding Aid Author
Sam Allingham
Finding Aid Date
2016 July 29
Access Restrictions

The bulk of this collection is open for research use. However, access to original audio/visual materials and computer files is restricted. The Kislak Center will provide access to the information on these materials from duplicate master files. If the original does not already have a copy, it will be sent to an outside vendor for copying. Patrons are financially responsible for the cost. The turnaround time from request to delivery of digital items is about two weeks for up to five items and three to seven weeks for more than five items. Please contact Reprographic Services (reprogr@upenn.edu) for cost estimates and ordering. Once digital items are received, researchers will have access to the files on a dedicated computer in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Researchers should be aware of specifics of copyright law and act accordingly.

Use Restrictions

Copyright restrictions may exist. For most library holdings, the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania do not hold copyright. It is the responsibility of the requester to seek permission from the holder of the copyright to reproduce material from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Collection Inventory

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Scope and Contents

This series contains notes, manuscripts, and typescripts related to Millet's writing, including poetry, plays, criticism, editorials published in periodicals, translations, and anthologies which Millet edited. All works are arranged chronologically. The majority of Millet's works were not published in her lifetime, and many of the poems and essays recur – sometimes with revisions – in several manuscripts. The critical manuscripts provide a picture of Millet's attitude toward what she saw as the poetry establishment, her antipathy toward many of its main figures, including James Tate, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, and her complicated feelings towards the literary experimentation associated with Modernism. This series also contains correspondence related to Millet's poetry and political writing, including issues debated within leftist political and artistic circles, such as segregation and the representation of working-class struggle. Millet's correspondence with the editors of Masses and Mainstream over her poem concerning Emmett Till is of particular interest, as is her discussion with a Chinese translator concerning the Chinese edition of her Collected Poems.

Various poems, typescript, 1931-1947.
Box 1 Folder 1
Various poems, typescript, 1934-1954.
Box 1 Folder 2-4
Uncollected poems, typescript, 1934-1977.
Box 1 Folder 5-6
Untoward Ways and various poems, typescript, 1943-1979.
Box 1 Folder 7
Many Dawns with notes on Kid with a Kazoo, typescript, 1952-1953.
Box 1 Folder 8
Many Dawns typescript, 1953.
Box 1 Folder 9
Poems and translations, typescript, 1954-1968.
Box 1 Folder 10
Kid with a Kazoo typescript, 1958-1959.
Box 1 Folder 11
Kid with a Kazoo early draft, circa 1958.
Box 1 Folder 12
Various poems, typescript, 1966-1967.
Box 1 Folder 13
Notebook of poetry drafts, 1967-1971.
Box 1 Folder 14
Chain Reaction, Fragments for a Civilization, various poems, typescript, 1968-1969.
Box 1 Folder 15
Chain Reaction typescript, circa 1969.
Box 1 Folder 16
American Century, vol. 1, typescript, 1972-1977.
Box 1 Folder 17
American Century, vol. 2, typescript , 1972-1977.
Box 1 Folder 18
Untoward Ways typescript, 1979.
Box 1 Folder 19
Correspondence concerning Martha Millet's poetry, 1946-1980.
Box 1 Folder 20
Genesis, Genesis typescript, 1966.
Box 2 Folder 1-4
Genesis, Genesis notebooks, 1966.
Box 2 Folder 5
Freedom Poems typescript, 1935-1938.
Box 2 Folder 6
Freedom Poems vol. II, typescript, 1935-1938.
Box 2 Folder 7
Men and the Sea typescript, 1944-1950.
Box 2 Folder 8
Men and the Sea vol. II, 1944-1950.
Box 2 Folder 9
Correspondence concerning Men and the Sea, 1945-1965.
Box 14 Folder 12
Homemade manuscripts for Millet's children, circa 1951.
Box 2 Folder 10
Various typescripts of work for children, 1952-1959.
Box 2 Folder 11
Various grammar exercises, circa 1956.
Box 2 Folder 12
Manuscripts of poems for children , 1999.
Box 14 Folder 11
Notes for a work on Eliot, after 1955.
Box 2 Folder 12
Literary essays, typescript, circa 1959.
Box 2 Folder 13
Literary essays, typescript, circa 1959.
Box 2 Folder 14
Notes for a work on James Tate and the New Critics, circa 1959.
Box 2 Folder 15-16
The Troll King: Studies in Contemporary Poetry typescript, 1959.
Box 3 Folder 1-2
Correspondence concerning The Ezra Pound Myth, 1967-1968.
Box 3 Folder 3
Application for grant from the Rabinowitz Foundation to complete The Ezra Pound Myth, 1968.
Box 3 Folder 4-6
Correspondence concerning The Ezra Pound Myth, 1969-1979.
Box 3 Folder 7
The Ezra Pound Myth typescript, 1971.
Box 3 Folder 8-10
Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin for a work on slavery, 1979.
Box 3 Folder 11
Correspondence with editors of Masses and Mainstream concerning Millet's poem about Emmett Till, 1955-1956.
Box 3 Folder 12
Letter to the Editor of Manhattan Tribune, 1968.
Box 3 Folder 13
Essays for the Daily Worker, 1968.
Box 3 Folder 14
Essays for the Daily World, 1976-1978.
Box 3 Folder 15
Columns by Millet for the Colorado Daily, 1982.
Box 3 Folder 16
Letters to the Editor by Millet, published in various Colorado newspapers, 1982-1984.
Box 3 Folder 17
Letters to the Editor by Millet, published in various Colorado newspapers, 1985-1995.
Box 3 Folder 18
Correspondence and notes concerning Chinese translation of Millet's work, 1955-1960.
Box 4 Folder 1
Chinese translation of Millet's Collected Poems, 1957.
Box 4 Folder 2
Correspondence to Millet from China, 1958-1964.
Box 4 Folder 3
The Last of the Lemmings typescript, 1967.
Box 4 Folder 4
Letters from literary figures supporting Millet's application for a Houghton-Mifflin fellowship, 1945-1949.
Box 4 Folder 5
Millet's Magazine Rack columns, 1946-1947.
Box 4 Folder 6
Reviews of Millet's work, 1947-1956.
Box 4 Folder 7
Miscellaneous poetry and prose manuscripts, 1952-1959.
Box 4 Folder 8
Miscellaneous Manuscripts, 1954-1966.
Box 4 Folder 9
Miscellaneous manuscripts, 1954-1966.
Box 4 Folder 10
Notecards recording Millet's publications up to 1957, circa 1957.
Box 4 Folder 11
Notes for unpublished anthology, unknown.
Box 4 Folder 12-16
Brief autobiography of Millet for Colorado University at Boulder, after 1980.
Box 4 Folder 17
Artistic material collected by Millet, 1926-1946.
Box 8 Folder 1
The Archer-Jewish Currents, 1954-1969.
Box 5 Folder 1
Masses and Mainstream, 1953-1956.
Box 5 Folder 2
Mainstream-Trace, 1947-1956.
Box 5 Folder 3
Our Women, 1953.
Box 8 Folder 2
Saplings: 1935 (collection of work by U.S. high school students), 1935.
Box 14 Folder 1
Contemporary American Women Poets, 1936.
Box 14 Folder 2
American Women Poets 1937, 1937.
Box 14 Folder 3
Music Unheard: an anthology of hitherto unpublished verse, 1939.
Box 14 Folder 4
Eros: an anthology of modern love poems, 1939.
Box 14 Folder 5
Seven Poets in Search of an Answer, 1944.
Box 14 Folder 6
Jewish Life Anthology, 1946-1956, 1956.
Box 14 Folder 7
The New Orlando Poetry Anthology, hardback and paperback copies, 1958.
Box 14 Folder 8
Pata Rocni Doba (American Radical Poetry), Czech anthology, 1959.
Box 14 Folder 9
Photocopies of books featuring Millet's work, 1935-1956.
Box 14 Folder 10

Scope and Contents

This series contains scrapbooks which Millet made of her own work. Some contain clippings of Millet's poetry and criticism from periodicals, while others collect public response to her published books of poetry, Thine Alabaster Cities and Dangerous Jack, and the anthology she edited, Poems for the Rosenbergs.

Millet's magazine publications, 1934-1944.
Box 7 Folder 1
Millet's magazine publications, 1944-1953.
Box 6 Folder 1
Thine Alabaster Cities, 1952.
Box 10 Folder 1-2
Millet's magazine publications, 1953-1955.
Box 6 Folder 2
Millet's magazine publications, 1953-1955.
Box 11 Folder 2
Dangerous Jack, 1953-1954.
Box 6 Folder 3
Scrapbook of Millet's magazine publications, 1955-1971.
Box 6 Folder 4
Poems for the Rosenbergs, 1957.
Box 11 Folder 1

Scope and Contents

This series contains materials related to Millet's participation in the 1955 Helsinki Peace Conference, an international gathering of Communist and leftist activists sponsored by the Soviet government. It includes materials collected by Millet from delegates representing different countries, memorabilia and textiles from the conference (including a rug and a commemorative plate), and a poem Millet wrote in response to her experience.

Materials from delegates at the 1955 Helsinki Peace Conference, 1955.
Box 5 Folder 4
Textiles from Helsinki Peace Conference, 1955.
Box 5 Folder 5
Plate and rug from Helsinki Peace Conference, 1955.
Box 9
Millet poem in response to Helsinki Peace Conference, 1956.
Box 5 Folder 6

Scope and Contents

This series contains material related to Millet's second husband, Sender Garlin. The majority of the material comes from the latter part of Garlin's life, and includes editorials published in Colorado newspapers and audiocassette recordings of talks given by Garlin at KGNU, the Boulder community radio station. The audiocassette recordings are restricted. However, there is some material from Garlin's earlier life, including correspondence with other radicals and a manuscript he gave to Millet near the time of their marriage entitled "The Truth About Readers' Digest." In addition, the series contains Garlin's extensive FBI file, parts of which were redacted by the Bureau.

A note on the audiocassette material: Access to original audio/visual materials and computer files is restricted. The Kislak Center will provide access to the information on these materials from duplicate master files. If the original does not already have a copy, it will be sent to an outside vendor for copying. Patrons are financially responsible for the cost. The turnaround time from request to delivery of digital items is about two weeks for up to five items and three to seven weeks for more than five items. Please contact Reprographic Services (reprogr@upenn.edu) for cost estimates and ordering. Once digital items are received, researchers will have access to the files on a dedicated computer in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Researchers should be aware of specifics of copyright law and act accordingly.

Sender Garlin correspondence, 1924-1999.
Box 5 Folder 7
Articles, Promotional material, and Biographical sketch, 1931-1946.
Box 5 Folder 8
Articles by Sender Garlin in Colorado newspapers, 1980-1992.
Box 5 Folder 9
Sender Garlin FBI file, 1981.
Box 5 Folder 10-14
Posters for talks by Sender Garlin at University of Colorado, Boulder, circa 1982.
Box 8 Folder 3
Obituaries for Sender Garlin, 1999.
Box 5 Folder 15
on Labor Day, 1982.
Box 13 Item 17
on Big Bill Haywood, 1982.
Box 13 Item 16
on Scott Nearing, 1984.
Box 13 Item 20
on Joe Hill, 1984-1988.
Box 13 Item 19
on Clarence Darrow, The People's Advocate, 1985.
Box 13 Item 26
Sender Garlin appreciation party at University of Colorado alumni center , 1986.
Box 13 Item 21
on the Colorado Coal Strike, 1987.
Box 13 Item 7
Mark Twain as Social Critic, 1988.
Box 13 Item 24
The Menace of McCarthyism, 1989.
Box 13 Item 3
On Scott Nearing, 1990.
Box 13 Item 1
Three American Radicals, interview on KGNU, 1991.
Box 13 Item 15
on James Reston, KGNU Boulder Community Radio program "Hemispheres", 1992.
Box 13 Item 4
on Mother Jones, on KGNU Boulder Community Radio program "Hemispheres", 1992.
Box 13 Item 5
on Mother Jones, circa 1992.
Box 13 Item 12
on Jack London, 1992.
Box 13 Item 14
War aginst Labor + Left, KGNU radio broadcast, 1992.
Box 13 Item 22
Sender Garlin Memorial, 1999.
Box 13 Item 2
on Mark Reston, KGNU broadcast for show "Hemispheres", undated.
Box 13 Item 25
on W.E.B. DuBois, undated.
Box 13 Item 23
on Labor and the Media, KGNU radio broacast, undated.
Box 13 Item 8
on Eugene V. Debs, undated.
Box 13 Item 9
on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, undated.
Box 13 Item 10
How I Got to Be This Way, KGNU , undated .
Box 13 Item 11
on the Russian Revolution and the movie REDS, undated.
Box 13 Item 18
Sender Reminiscences, undated.
Box 13 Item 13

Scope and Contents

This series contains work by writers others than Millet and Garlin. It includes microfilm reproductions and typed transcriptions of Ezra Pound's WWII-era radio broadcasts, a collaborative poem produced by Millet's students at the Jefferson School of Social Science, a Chinese translation of William Blake's work inscribed to Millet, and several poems by Nazim Hikmet transcribed by Millet.

Ezra Pound quotes collected for The Ezra Pound Myth, 1927-1943.
Box 5 Folder 16-18
Ezra Pound radio transcripts with Millet's note, 1941-1943.
Box 5 Folder 19-22
Poems by Nazim Hikmet, transcribed by Millet, circa 1955.
Box 5 Folder 23
Collective poem by Millet's poetry workshop at the Jefferson School of Social Science, 1955.
Box 5 Folder 24
Chinese translation of William Blake, inscribed to Millet, 1957.
Box 5 Folder 25

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