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This exhibition presents materials from a major recent library acquisition, the Angel Hair Books collection. Angel Hair was the brainchild of poets Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh, who started the imprint in New York City in the spring of 1966 (when both were just 20 years old). Waldman and Warsh would go on to become iconic figures of poetry's New York School in their own right, and the books and journal they published through Angel Hair chart major shifts in mid-century poetry. Between 1966 and 1978, Angel Hair published important works by Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, Clark Coolidge, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler, along with early work by Warsh and Waldman.

The Poetry Center acquired a complete collection of Angel Hair publications in 2020. In this exhibition, we invite you to view a sampling from this astonishing collection, including chapbooks, broadsides, and archival press ephemera.