Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation

MSS 15955, Sotère Torregian poem, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection is a gift from Nina Matheson to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia on May 8, 2015.

Biographical / Historical

Sotère Torregian is an American poet, born in Newark, New Jersey on June 25, 1941. He attended Rutgers University, and taught briefly at the Free University of New York and Stanford University, where he helped establish the Afro-American studies program in 1969. In the mid-1960s he was associated with the New York School of poets. At that time he proposed a kind of American "orthodox Surrealism" (following the dictates of André Breton), based on "reinterpretations of surrealist stands on Revolutionary perspectives in art, poetry, and theology." He presently resides in Stockton, California. (information taken from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sotere-torregian)

Scope and Contents

This collection of a Sotère Torregian poem is 0.03 cubic feet, dated April 10, 1976 and is a handwritten impromptu poem to his publisher, Bob Hawley for his housewarming. It is, inscribed "Presented to Bob and Dorothy At our long-overdue reunion, in friendship, Sotere"