Literature will always outlive those who write it and, in fall 2010, a group of UB undergraduates, along with UB English professor Stephen McCaffery, made sure another piece of work had the same longevity.
McCaffery, along with his Modern and Contemporary Poetry class, took a visit to the Poetry Collection located on the fourth floor of Capen Hall. What began as a routine visit to look at works of literature in their first edition, many being one-of-a-kind pieces of literature, ended up as a class effort to preserve Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (1912).
Senior English major Andrew Borchik was one of the driving forces in this movement. According to Borchik, the class was required to pick a piece of literature they admired in The Poetry Collection and write a response paper. The compromised condition of these books left Borchik in shock and compelled him to take action.
Tender Buttonsserves as Stein's pivotal and most popular work, and the class refurbished the first edition book.
"I started to think about my conversation with the books themselves, my experiences [at UB], and what we can do as students to help Special Collections and The Poetry Collection preserve this material for future generations of students," Borchik said. "Your conversation with poetry isn't necessarily whether you like it or not...[it's] what it means on a higher level and how can I interact with it."
According to Michael Basinski, curator of The Poetry Collection, the process of refurbishing a book isn't complex because of how much time it takes, but how rare the activity is. As told to newsletter UB Libraries Today, Professor Mccaffery also expressed his happiness with the determination of his students.
"In my entire history of teaching, this spontaneous collective gift was unprecedented," McCaffery said. "To me, it indicates the value placed on rare and fragile items. It was a rare gesture, and in our current predominantly digital world, an almost revolutionary gesture."
The Modern and Contemporary Poetry course mainly consisted of higher level English students, most of whom will graduate this May. Borchik expressed his experience in bringing Stein's book back to life as a way for his classmates to leave their literary mark at UB.
"[UB students can] all have this experience. It's available to us," Borchik said. "There's other people around the world that might like poetry, or read or write poetry, [and] this experience isn't available to them. So we can do this as UB students...to preserve this for future generations."
Basinski hopes that Professor McCaffery, Borchik, and his classmates can be held as an example for other students to also take the step toward familiarizing themselves with not only the Poetry Collection, but also all the works in Special Collections, hidden gems to the majority of UB students.
"There are 140,000 first editions beginning in 1900 behind these walls," Basinski said. "There [are] very few places in the world...where someone can walk in and look at [the book] and actually touch [it]. This is the public's poetry."
According to Basinski, UB's Special Collections holds resources that are extremely rare and won't be found in some of the country's most prestigious libraries, including those at Yale University or Emory University.
As a student, Borchik never expected to be face to face with so many original works from acclaimed authors like James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Geoffrey Chaucer.
"My mind has been blown in this room," Borchik said. "When Professor [Joseph] Valente brought us to this room...[original] Shakespeare and [Edgar Allen] Poe. You don't see that everyday."
Borchik believes that the responsibility of knowing this diamond in the rough lies in the student because of how the Special Collections and The Poetry Collection are in a hidden part of campus.
"It's your choice to open a book, just as much as it is your choice to open this door," Borchik said. "You have to have the initiative...[this part of Capen] brings the entire experience of reading to another level."
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