ITHACA, N.Y. — Ithaca has its roots in poetry — named after the Greek island in “Odyssey,” Homer’s epic poem, it is no surprise Ithaca has historically had a lively literary scene.
Now, some of the history of Ithaca’s literary community will become more accessible via the creation of a digital archive for Ithaca House Press.
Marty Cain, a Ph.D candidate in English Language & Literature at Cornell, was one of three recipients of the Digital Consulting and Production Services (DCAPS) grant selected by the Visual Resources Advisory Group at Cornell University. The grants are awarded annually to support faculty and graduate student research by creating digital collections to be utilized by teaching and research communities.
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The grant is providing Cain with the facilities to reproduce hundreds of pages of the Ithaca House Press collection. Ithaca House Press was a small poetry press started by Baxter Hathaway, former professor of English at Cornell University, in 1969. During its 15 years, Ithaca House published more than 100 titles.
Katherine Reagan, assistant director for collections and Ernest L. Stern Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, said Cornell Library’s Rare and Manuscript Division acquired the collection 18 years ago from William Lavigne, a former co-editor of the press. The collection includes hand-made, letter-pressed editions of poetry published between 1960 and 1990, items by other small Ithaca poetry presses and business records of Ithaca House Press and the Ithaca House Gallery and Bookstore, which opened in the West End in 1970 and sold Ithaca House Press books and crafts from local artisans. Some Ithaca House collaborators included indigenous writers Joe Bruchac, Ralph Salisbury and Peter Wild, African American poets William Harris and Kenneth McClane, as well as writers Ron Silliman and Ray DiPalma.
“Overall, the press preserves a piece of Ithaca’s local literary history,” Reagan said.
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Although the press was started by a Cornell professor, it was not directly affiliated with the university, nor did it receive university funding.
“One of the reasons it started was because Cornell University Press started publishing much less poetry,” Cain said. “It’s kind of thought of as this institutional thing that’s associated with Cornell. It’s actually not, and is, in fact, a response to the failings of Cornell to represent the literary community in Ithaca and elsewhere.”
Ithaca House was just one of many small presses in the Ithaca area around this time, along with The Angelfish Press and Stone-Marrow Press, both run by Cornell alumni David Sykes and James Bertolino respectively, and The Crossings Press, run by poet John Gil, former professor at Ithaca College.
Other collections that speak to Ithaca’s literary history have been digitized over the years, like The Bookpress, a monthly literary newspaper that ran from 1991 to 2003.
“I think this program represents one of the longstanding, innovative ways in which the Library supports scholarship by creating digital collections in support of teaching and research in the greater scholarly community,” Tre Berney, chair of the Visual Resources Advisory Group, said. “All of these digital collections represent unique, rare, or contextually distinctive materials from Cornell’s collections and research and they speak to the interdisciplinary strength of the University.”
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Berney said that digitizing the Ithaca House archives will allow more accessibility to the history of Ithaca’s literary and publishing communities.
“Cornell and Ithaca are wedded in ways that have always represented each other and this proposal was a nice spotlight on that intersection of the community’s shared history,” Berney said. “The proposed material touches on the small press’ rich history of poetry, including experimental Black poet, C.S Giscombe.”
Cain said he was surprised that the history and impact of Ithaca House seems to be relatively unknown in the Ithaca community. He is also hoping to compile a selection of poems from books that Ithaca House published. Cain said that he has done archival research before, but not with physical materials in this way.
“I'm interested in writing about it and thinking through it because of its importance to small press more broadly, which is something I’m interested in, but also what it might tell us about the institutional relationship in Cornell and Ithaca,” he said. “As somebody who works and studies at Cornell, there’s this kind of attitude among a lot of students and professors that Cornell is this sort of island that’s separate from Ithaca.”
Cain also hopes to look at the Ithaca House business files and multimedia materials, like photos from release parties. Cain himself has organized the Party Fawn reading series in Ithaca, which brings in both local writers and writers from outside of Ithaca. He also is a co-founder of Garden-Door Press, an Ithaca-based micro-press dedicated to publishing politically active and underrepresented voices, that he started with his wife, Kina Viola. The press does extremely limited runs, usually less than 50 copies, of handmade books, which are hand-sewn and letter-pressed on the Cornell campus.
“I’m interested in longer histories of what literary organizing looks like in Ithaca, and I see this as one piece of that history that’s interesting,” he said. “In order to make poetry presses happen, you have to get creative and you have to figure out how to graft upon the structures that are at your disposal. For both Ithaca House, and for me and Kina, it’s Cornell and figuring out how to work in that system. We don't have official funding, but we’re employed there, so on one level, it is funded by Cornell. There’s a similar kind of bizarre relationship with Ithaca House and Cornell. It’s important that it’s Ithaca House, and not Cornell House.”
Photo courtesy of Cornell University Library.
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