“MS 693 - Carol Berge Collection.” Finding Aids. BGSU University Libraries, 11 June 2014, lib.bgsu.edu/finding_aids/items/show/920. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
The Carol Bergé Collection was purchased by the Center for Archival Collections, Jerome Library, Bowling Green State University, in 1993. Additional correspondence dating from 1983-1985 was donated by the author in February 1994. An addition to the collection focusing on Bergé's last projects was donated to the collection by James Beach in 2012. The collection consists of correspondence, subject files relating to poets and poetry publishing, literary manuscripts, and a supporting book and periodical collection, dealing with American poet/author Carol Bergé and her circle. It complements and supports the Rare Books and Special Collections Division's modern poetry collection. Related collections include the Thomas F. Eckman Memorial Collection, the Virginia Stranahan Collection, the Robert Peters Collection, and the BGSU Creative Writing Program Collection.
This collection is open for scholarly use. No material from Berge's unpublished manuscripts or published works may be copied or quoted without permission of Carol Berge's literary executor. Researchers are responsible for securing copyright permission when using all unpublished manuscripts and published works, whether authored by Bergé or by other writers whose works are found in this collection.
The finding aid was prepared by Lee N. McLaird, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections in 1996, revised in April 1997, January 2007, and November 2012.
Biographical Sketch
Carol Bergé was born in Manhattan October 4, 1928, daughter of Albert Peppis, and attended the Fieldston School there and schools in Westchester and Florida. She attended New York University and Columbia, studying social sciences, literature and fine arts, for over nine years, dismissing the option of a degree program. During the years 1946-1955, while attending college, she worked full-time for well-known publishing and advertising firms. In 1955, she married Jack Berge, an Argentine working in foreign trade. A son, Peter, was born in 1956. After a divorce, Bergé traveled alone and with Makoto Oda in Europe. In 1960, she won custody of her son and began a long association with the Deux Megots group of writers and other artists in New York City, where they lived. Her poetry was published widely; she was part of the Fluxus multimedia activities as well as reading from her work at coffeeshops and schools. She listed her early influences as Malinowski, Benedict, Mead, Kluckhohn, Freuchen, Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare, the Brontes, DuMaurier, Poe (the stories), Conan Doyle, Saki, Browning, and Chaucer. Among her contemporaries, she listed as authors she respected Donald Phelps, Fielding Dawson, John Cage, Amiri Baraka, Jackson Mac Low, and Howard McCord. In 1963, she began to move earnestly into fiction writing. The collection of stories, A Couple Called Moebius, from Bobbs-Merrill, was well-received by reviewers, and was followed by Acts of Love: An American Novel, also from Bobbs-Merrill and well-reviewed. Alongside the fiction publications (eight books, including two published novels), there were eleven books of poetry and many anthology inclusions. Always involved in explorations of new forms and innovative writing, in 1970, she began editing and publishing CENTER Magazine, an important forum for avant-garde writing on an international level. It continued for thirteen issues, eventually resulting in CENTER Press, which published books of fiction and co-published her own summary "Collected" (with Tribal Press), Zebras. CENTER Press also published a first novel by Miriam Sagan and a collection of short fiction by Carl Ginsburg. Many fiction writers had their earliest forays published in CENTER Magazine, which also produced two chapbooks of innovative fiction.
In 1970, in Woodstock, New York, Bergé began a teaching career which she continued throughout her life; she wrote and published a second novel (Acts of Love) and continued to develop a career as a collector of and dealer in antiques. She bought and renovated a 110-year-old farmhouse property in Woodstock, the first of eight such rehab projects.
Over the next thirty-five years, Bergé taught at some fifteen universities, traveled extensively, and lived in several countries, settling eventually in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she owned and managed The Blue Gate, an antiques and art gallery, while she continued to write, teach, edit, and co-author. She was an inveterate correspondent as well. Her own fuller description of her life as a writer can be found in Volume 10 of Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. Bergé died in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 12, 2006.
Scope and Content
The Carol Bergé Collection consists of personal correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, subject/clipping files, periodicals and books.
The largest section is the correspondence files, including incoming and outgoing correspondence from 1983-1997. Bergé was a prolific letter-writer, and her friendships and intellectual life are fully revealed in these files. Topics in the correspondence cover poetry, poets, fiction, and publishing in the last years of the twentieth century. Many notable writers appear among her correspondents, including Judson Crews, Howard McCord, Eugene K. Garber, George Hitchcock, Ronald Tavel, Miriam Sagan, Robert Peters, and Diane Wakoski. The collection is particularly valuable in notating Berge's outgoing correspondence. She wrote extensively to students, providing critiques of their work and provided valuable insights into her own creative processes and personal history. Berge's early manuscripts are housed at the University of Texas-Austin (1960-1969) and at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (1970-1983).
A section of project correspondence (1983-1997) documents Berge's activities in seeing manuscripts through publication, her CENTER Magazine, working with Althea Carlson and Margaret Price on books, and work related to her business, Blue Gate, dealing with employees and hosting exhibitions.
The subject and clipping files include biographical information about Bergé and many of her fellow authors, as well as subjects of interest to Bergé personally and professionally.
Manuscripts of poetry and prose through many drafts (dating from 1975 to 1997) illustrate Berge's writing technique. As an editor, teacher, and mentor to younger writers, Berge's commentary on others' manuscripts illuminates her own views of the writers' life and goals. The manuscripts sent to her by other writers give an indication of the range of material Bergé worked with, both as teacher and as editor.
A complete list of Berge's personal library can be gleaned from the BGSU online catalog, valuable for inscriptions documenting personal and professional relationships as well as revealing the range of Berge's reading. All of her published books are included.
The periodicals in the collection (a complete list is included) document the rest of Berge's published works. Especially notable are the examples from alternative presses of the 1960s and 1970s.
CORRESPONDENCE - PERSONAL 1985-1996, 759 folders Arranged alphabetically by correspondent, then chronologically. A complete index of correspondents is found at the end of this register.
CORRESPONDENCE - JUDSON CREWS 1986-1996; 19 folders Arranged chronologically Includes correspondence with John McLoughlin.
CORRESPONDENCE - BUSINESS PROJECTS 1970s-1996; 44 folders Arranged by topic, then chronologically
CORRESPONDENCE - LIGHT YEARS PROJECT 1993-1996; 51 folders Arranged alphabetically by correspondent, then chronologically Filed following sound recordings Documents a project to prepare a history of the poets of the 1960s
SUBJECT FILES A - Z 1970s-1995; 35 folders Arranged by subject Includes promotional material about published works, poets and presses, and photocopies of published poetry signed by the poets.
MANUSCRIPTS (LITERARY) - CAROL BERGÉ 1960-1996; 83 folders Arranged alphabetically by title Includes poetry and prose
MANUSCRIPTS (LITERARY) - OTHER WRITERS 1980s-1996; 83 folders Arranged alphabetically by author Includes drafts of single works and collections sent to Bergé by the authors.
MANUSCRIPTS (LITERARY) - LIGHT YEARS PROJECT 1993-1996; 34 folders Arranged alphabetically by author Includes drafts of works intended for Light Years project. Filed following sound recordings
PHOTOGRAPHS 1940s-1995, scattered dates; 18 folders Arranged by format and date Most photographs document family and friends of Bergé. Some photographs from Judson Crews have letters on the back and are filed in that section of correspondence.
ARTWORK - BERGÉ AND OTHERS 1980s-1996; 12 folders Includes original artwork by Bergé, Philip Corner, George Hitchcock, and Lynda Koolish.
Blue Gate Gallery. Including correspondence, etc. regarding Bergé's business, 1985-1996
CENTER Magazine. Writers Workshops. Including correspondence and publicity, 198?-1995
CENTER Magazine. Correspondence, 1982-1983
CENTER Magazine. Paste-ups, notes, etc., scattered dates
Creative Artists Public Service Program, 1983-1984
Creative Writers Survival Manual. Includes correspondence with publishers and agents regarding preparation and marketing of this unpublished manuscript. Includes rejection notes from publishers, 1969-1975; 1959-1977