Hello and welcome to 2012! As we enter this 50th year of the Plutzik Poetry Series and a full year of Plutzik Centennial celebrations, we’re pleased to announce the completion of a whole slew of new content added to the Hyam Plutzik Poetry site. A handy index on the Centennial page organizes the material in relation to 50/100 programming.

Two Centennial-centric additions are the Partners page, which includes biographies of creative collaborators and participating organizations, with links to their websites; and the Creative Opportunities page, on which we will post all invitations to get involved with Centennial projects.

In honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Series, we’ve published “An Informal History of the Plutzik Reading Series” in the Poetry Series section. This is a fond and humorous reminiscence written by U of R Professor of English Emeritus and one of the Series’ longest-term directors, Jarold Ramsey. Additional research into this history was provided by Professor Russell Peck, also of the U of R English Department. The essay chronicles the intellectual climate in which the Series was born and the continuing success of series’ directors in maintaining a variety of high-caliber readings despite logistical and financial challenges. The essay concludes with an entertaining series of highlights and lowlights from Ramsey’s personal recollections. Also available is the complete roster of Series Readers from 1962 to present.

We’ve also added an expanded essay discussing the Life and Poetry of Hyam Plutzik. This essay is divided into sections detailing chronological periods in Plutzik’s life, as well as thematic sections including Jewish identity and the Cold War environment in which Plutzik spent the better part of his professional life in academia.

Next, you should visit two additions to the Resources section: The new Plutzik Library page provides information about the Hyam Plutzik Library for Contemporary Writing at the University of Rochester, including descriptions of exhibits held there as part of the Plutzik Centennial and Series 50th Anniversary celebrations.

Another new page, the Audio Library, presents a selection of audio materials relating to Plutzik’s poetry including musical compositions inspired by the poems; a recording of Plutzik reading and discussing his last published work, the long poem Horatio; and an NPR interview from 2007, in which Literary Consultant Edward Moran discusses the documentary film Hyam Plutzik: American Poet.

And there’s more to come–an online database of recent scholarly essays concerning Plutzik’s work will be available soon.

The title of this blog, “A Fistful of Words,” comes from Hyam Plutzik’s own pen — from the last line of a poem never published in his own lifetime: “On Hearing That My Poems Were Being Studied in a Distant Place.” In this work, set in some distant future time and place, Plutzik imagines himself silently observing a classroom where his poems have finally achieved an immortality that authors, naturally, cannot. As “the teacher expounds my life,” Plutzik is drawn to comment how the fragility of an individual life is redeemed by the enduring life of poetry. He concludes the poem with these words: “Out of my life I fashioned a fistful of words. When I opened my hand, they flew away.”

If his words have indeed flown away, they have come back to roost in the memories of those who knew and loved him, and in the imaginative responses of those who continue to read his works. Over the past six years, I’ve spent countless hours in the Hyam Plutzik Archives at the University of Rochester, one of the not-so-distant places to which his many words have flown.

As we prepared for the 2011-12 Centennial year (Hyam Plutzik was born in 1911; the Plutzik Poetry Series was launched in 1962, the year of his death), I returned many times to look through this remarkable poet’s archives. I got to know the poet as few can: by meticulously sifting through the notes, drafts, memos, letters, and occasional scribblings that marked Hyam Plutzik’s all-too-short life. From time to time, we’ll be posting interesting discoveries here: drafts of never-before-published poems; letters sent to his wife while he was stationed in England during WWII; observations on the segregated South he witnessed first-hand while stationed in Army bases there; excerpts from lengthy letters to his academic mentors like Odell Shepard and Mark Van Doren; statements about his own development as a poet.

This will also be an opportunity for readers old and new to post comments and observations about Hyam Plutzik and how his life and poetry have touched and inspired them. Were you one of his colleagues or students? Did you know him through family or friends? Or do you know him only through his works? Please share any comments you have with us as we pause to remember the work of a poet whose works are indeed being studied today in many distance places, including cyberspace.

Edward Moran
Literary Advisor
50/100 Committee