ELWYN B. ROBINSON DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
CHESTER FRITZ LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA
GRAND FORKS, NORTH DAKOTA 58202

THOMAS McGRATH PAPERS

COLLECTION: OGL #308

DATES: 1940-1975

SIZE: 2.5 linear feet

INTRODUCTION

ACQUISITION:The Thomas McGrath Papers were deposited in the Orin G. Libby Collection Manuscript Collection by Thomas McGrath on August 22, 1975. The acquisition records are unavailable.

ACCESS: Available for inspection under the rules and regulations of the Department of Special Collections.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The following sketch was taken from:
Stern, Frederick. "A Biographical Sketch of Thomas McGrath." In The Revolutionary Poet in the United States: The Poetry of Thomas McGrath, edited by Frederick Stern. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988.

Thomas McGrath was born in 1916, the oldest son of James and Catherine (Shea) McGrath. There were four younger brothers, Jim (killed in World War II), Joe, Martin, and the youngest, Jack. His sister Kathleen was born between Joe and Martin. His parents were farmers, the second generation of them, working the land in Ransom County, North Dakota, near the town of Sheldon, about forty miles west of the Minnesota border, between the Maple and Sheyenne Rivers.

McGrath went to grade and high school in Sheldon, and then started somewhat delayed and intermittent University studies at Moorhead State University. Eventually, he attended the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks, where he earned a B.A. in 1939. Awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, he found that he could not use it immediately, because of the outbreak of World War II. He had received offers from a number of universities to begin work on an advanced degree - as had other Rhodes Scholars that year - and accepted and offer from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. There he studied, most intensely with Cleanth Brooks, was involved in radical political activity, wrote, and met Alan Swallow, who published McGrath's first book of poems as part of the development of The Swallow Press.

In the 1940-1941 academic year McGrath taught at Colby College in Maine, but did not find teaching there entirely satisfactory and thus left at the end of the academic year to go to New York City. There he wrote, organized, did legal research for attorneys engaged in "political" cases, and worked at the Kearney Shipyards, until he entered the armed forces in 1942. Most of his time in the service was spent on Amchitka Island. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1945. After a period of adjustment he was finally able to undertake the year of study provided by the Rhodes Scholarship and spent 1947-1948 at New College, Oxford, England.

Returning from the United States after some travel, McGrath engaged in various occupations and eventually found a faculty position at Los Angeles State University, where he taught from 1951 to 1954. His dismissal from this institution was directly connected with his appearance as an unfriendly witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, when that infamous body brought its hearings to Los Angeles in 1953.

From 1954 to 1960 McGrath worked variously as a secondary school teacher at a private institution, for a company that manufactured carved wooden animals, and at other jobs that might earn him his keep. He wrote film and television scripts from time to time, several of the former for director Mike Cimino. In 1960 he resumed his academic career, teaching at C.W. Post College (now part of Long Island University) in New York. At about this time he founded, with his wife Genia, the journal Crazy Horse.

In 1962 he returned to North Dakota, where he taught for five years at North Dakota State University at Fargo. In 1969 McGrath accepted a faculty position at Moorhead State University where he had first begun his studies as an undergraduate. At the end of the 1982-1983 academic year he retired from Moorhead State and moved to Minneapolis, where he now lives. [Note: Thomas McGrath died on 19 September 1990 in Minneapolis]

McGrath has held a variety of significant editorial positions and has been awarded a variety of distinguished prizes and fellowships for his work as a poet. Among the former, in addition to his founding editorship of Crazy Horse, he has been a contributing editor of Mainstream (later Masses and Mainstream) and has served on the editorial board of the California Quarterly. He has held an Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship in Poetry (1965), has twice been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1974, 1982), was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1967, and was twice a Bush Fellow (1976, 1981). In May 1981 the University of North Dakota awarded him a Doctorate of Letters. In 1977 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Western Literature. In 1986, The Associated Writing Programs presented McGrath an award at a dinner in Chicago, at which tributes to him were presented by author "Studs" Terkel and poets Philip Levine and Michael Anania. In the same year, a "Ceili" was held by Minneapolis's "the Loft," at which many distinguished poets and writers celebrated McGrath's seventieth birthday.

McGrath has been married three times, to Marion, Alice, and Eugenia (Genia), all of whom appear in his poetry. He is the father of a son, Tomasito, to whom much poetry from McGrath's later work is addressed and dedicated.

SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE

The Thomas McGrath Collection was reprocessed in February 1994. In light of recent additions that have been made to this collection, material that was previously divided into five boxes has been consolidated into three. The inventory was revised to reflect this change.

This portion of the collection consists of correspondence from 1962 to 1973, several screenplays written by McGrath, various manuscript versions of Letters to an Imaginary Friend, and numerous poems by McGrath. McGrath's book, First Manifesto, published in 1940 by Alan Swallow is included as are poems from Selected Manuscripts: 1942-1962, and manuscript versions of Tomasito Songs. Works by other writers including David Cumberland, Robert Bly, Mel Weisburg, Henry Wolff, Arnold Rattenburg, E.P. Thompson, R.P. Kingston, Jack Beeching, Sid Gershgoren, Vahan Gregory, and Robert Hazel may also be found in this section of the collection.

BOX AND FOLDER INVENTORY

Box 1
Folder

1. Guggenheim Fellowship - application and correspondence
2. Poem - "Lear's Murzzuschlag Song: Allegro Energico E Passionato" for Edward Dahlberg, September 1968
3. Poem - "Elegy on Fortification's Illusions" for Truman Nelson, by David Cumberland
4. Correspondence July 1968 - August 1968
5. Correspondence January 1968 - June 1968
6. Correspondence September 1966 - October 1966
7. Correspondence August 1967
8. Correspondence July 1967
9. Correspondence June 1967
10. Correspondence May 1967
11. Correspondence April 1967
12. Correspondence January 1967
13. Correspondence (no dates)
14. Correspondence January 1969 - June 1969
15. Correspondence and poetry related to Crazy Horse 1967
16. Correspondence (no dates)
17. Correspondence from Allen Planz (no dates)
18. Correspondence April 1966
19. Correspondence May 1966 - June 1966
20. Correspondence August 1966
21. Correspondence June 1966 - July 1966
22. Correspondence February 1966 - March 1966
23. Correspondence 1966
24. Correspondence November 1966 - December 1966
25. Correspondence January 1965 - December 1965
26. Correspondence August 1968 - September 1968
27. It #9, Robert Bly, featured poet in a small poetry magazine
28. Correspondence (no dates)
29. Correspondence January 1964
30. Correspondence February 1964
31. Correspondence July 1964 - August 1964
32. Correspondence January 1962 - August 1963
33. Correspondence May 1963 - August 1963
34. Correspondence September 1963 - December 1963
35. Correspondence November 1962
36. Poetry submitted to Thomas McGrath by Mel Weisburg and others
37. Book review of The Disinherited
38. Screen play The Bravest Boat September 11, 1961
39. Screen play, first version of KEF
40. The Ages of Time a script for the Hamilton Watch Company by Thomas McGrath and Lloyd Ritter, 2nd revision - January 1959
41. Screen play, The House of Man
42. Screen play, Revised to include suggestions by Dr. Bacon and Rand McNally staff
43. Screen play, The Johnson County War by Michael Cimino
44. Ms. "NYC" (New York City). Probably by Gene Frumkin
45. Ms. of a Mel Weisburg novel (untitled) and correspondence from c. February 1963
46. Correspondence from Open Skull Press, 1968 and excerpt from Letter to an Imaginary Friend
47. Poems from Henry Wolff, 1969
48. Poems from Arnold Rattenburg
49. Poetry submitted to Crazy Horse (C. 1970)
50. Screen play Silent Running by Dennis Lynton Clark and Robert Dillon, with notes by Thomas McGrath
51. Photocopy of Disenchantment or Default? a Lay Sermon, by E.P. Thompson
52. The Incidence of War and Other Poems, by R.P. Kingston
53. Correspondence and essay from Jack Beeching
54. Poems from Sid Gershgoren
55. Preview June 1973, Volume 7, Number 3 "Dakota is Everywhere - A Conversation with Thomas McGrath"
56. Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Book II, typed with proper line spacing and length
57. Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Book II, typed with corrections
58. Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Book II, "1st typed copy from the handwritten Ms. in the Barredor notebook"
59. KEF, a screenplay by Thomas McGrath and Michael Cimino, 2 copies
60. PARADISE, a screen play by Thomas McGrath and Michael Cimino, 2 copies
61. Conquering Horse, a screen play by Thomas McGrath and Michael Cimino, 2 copies
62. HIKA (Kenyon College), V. 28, #3, Spring-Summer 1966. Poems by Robert Hazel
63. Sun Dance by Vahan Gregory, including a letter to Thomas McGrath, 1965
64. Shooting script outline for Philadelphia '76, by Francis Thompson

Box 2
Folder

1. Correspondence April 1969 - July 1969
2. Miscellaneous screen plays
3. 1 copy (in Russian) of the Newspaper "The Union Administration of Authors of the USSR" (1 August 1963), including a poem by Thomas McGrath
4. Copy of manuscript, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part II
5. Handwritten notes and drafts of poems, as well as typed drafts. The following poems are included (listed by title or first line):

6. Copy of a typed manuscript, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part II
7. Correspondence February 1962 - June 1962
8. Correspondence July 1962 - August 1962
9. Correspondence September 1962 - October 1962
10. Correspondence November 1962
11. Correspondence December 1962
12. Correspondence (no dates)
13. Script fragments
14. Handwritten manuscript Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part I
15. Untitled manuscript, Selected Poems: 1942-1962 . The following poems may be found in this folder:

16. Manuscripts for Tomasito Songs, by Tomasito McGrath, 1975 . This folder contains the following poems (listed by title or first line):

17. Dummies of Tomasito Songs, by Tomasito McGrath, 1975
18. A Sound of One Hand (short poems), "second original draft." This folder contains the following poems (listed according to title or first line)

19. Movie at the End of the World, poems and addresses of individuals to receive copies
20. South Dakota Review, "Questions on Place in Literature and Responses by Thomas McGrath" (handwritten draft)
21. Miscellaneous poems by Thomas McGrath, including Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part III. This folder contains the following poems which are listed by title or first line:

22. Correspondence January 1965 - March 1965
23. Correspondence April 1965 - May 1965
24. Correspondence May 1964 - November 1964
25. Correspondence December 1964
26. 60-minute tape, "The Poetry and Jazz Players to Their Favorite Poet, Thomas McGrath"
27. 30-minute tape containing four Thomas McGrath poems read to blues-jazz instruments
28. Academic material related to Thomas McGrath's tenure as a professor at North Dakota State University
29. Correspondence January 15, 1970 - July 6, 1970
30. Correspondence July 8, 1970 - August 5, 1970
31. Correspondence August 7, 1970 - September 2, 1970
32. Correspondence September 5, 1970 - October 5, 1970
33. Correspondence October 6, 1970 - November 20, 1970
34. Correspondence November 3, 1970 - November 10, 1970
35. Correspondence November 11, 1970 - November 17, 1970
36. Correspondence November 17, 1970 - December 9, 1970
37. Correspondence December 9, 1970 - January 8, 1971
38. Correspondence January 19, 1971 - February 11, 1971
39. Correspondence February 12, 1971 - March 29, 1971
40. Correspondence March 29, 1971 - April 10, 1971
41. Correspondence and photocopies of two notebooks (no dates)
42. Correspondence January 21, 1971 - June 8, 1971
43. Correspondence February - June 1971
44. Correspondence July 5, 1971 - September 28, 1971
45. Correspondence October 7, 1971 - November 30, 1971
46. Correspondence December 3, 1971 - December 23, 1971
47. Correspondence, from Jack Beeching 1971
48. Correspondence January 1972 - February 1971
49. Correspondence March 1, 1972 - April 29, 1972
50. Correspondence May 1, 1972 - June 26, 1972
51. Correspondence July 1, 1972 - August 29, 1972
52. Correspondence September 1972 - October 1972
53. Correspondence November 1972 - December 1972
54. Correspondence January 1973 - February 1973
55. Correspondence March 1973 - April 1973
56. Correspondence May 1973 - June 1973
57. Correspondence July 1973
58. Correspondence August 1973 - September 1973
59. First Manifesto, by Thomas McGrath. Published in 1940 by Alan Swallow. Photocopy of Thomas McGrath's testimony before the Committee on Un-American Activities

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