Robert Bertholf, 1940-2016
The Poetry Collection mourns the loss of its longtime curator Robert J. Bertholf, who died February 19 at his home in Austin, Texas.
A graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Oregon who first taught at Kent State University, Bertholf served as curator of what at the time was the Poetry and Rare Books Collection from 1979 until 2005, when he was named the Charles D. Abbott Scholar of Poetry and the Arts. He retired in 2007.
Robert Bertholf, ca. 2000.
A widely published scholar of American poetry, he edited the little magazine Credences and was the author/editor of numerous books including Robert Duncan: Scales of the Marvelous (with Ian Reid) (1980), William Blake and the Moderns (1982), A Descriptive Catalog of the Private Library of Thomas B. Lockwood (1983), Robert Duncan: A Descriptive Bibliography (1986), A Great Admiration: H.D./Robert Duncan Correspondence 1950-1961 (1991), Jess: a Grand Collage, 1951-1993 (with Michael Auping and Michael Palmer) (1993), Robert Duncan’s Selected Poems (1993, new edition 1997) and A Selected Prose (1995), Joel Oppenheimer’s Drawing from Life (with David Landrey) (1997) and Collected Later Poems (1998), The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov (with Albert Gelpi)(2003), and Remembering Joel Oppenheimer (2005).
- Read his obituary in the UB Reporter.
- Read Nancy Weekly’s remembrance on the Burchfield Penney blog.