Robert Anbian papers

Access and use

Location of collection:
University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400110
160 McCormick Rd
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Brenda Gunn
Phone: (434) 924-1037
Phone: (434) 243-1776
Fax: (434) 924-4968
Restrictions:

This collection is open for research.

Preferred citation:

MSS 16922, Robert Anbian papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Summary

Extent:
5.35 Cubic Feet 13 document boxes, one medium oversized flat box
Creator:
Anbian, Robert
Language:
English French Greek, Modern (1453-)
Preferred citation:

MSS 16922, Robert Anbian papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains the papers of poet, author, publisher, and political activist Robert White Anbian (1949-2022). Anbian graduated from the University of Virginia in 1971, after which he spent three years in Niger with the Peace Corps from 1974 to 1977. He then relocated to San Francisco, where he worked as a writer and poet until his death. From 1985 to 1996, Robert served as the editor of the monthly Film Arts Foundation magazine, Release Print, and the publicist for an independent filmmaker education and advocacy group. He founded his own publishing house, Night Horn Books. Anbian published three poetry collections: WE Parts 1 & 2 (Night Horn Books, 1999), Antinostalgia (Ruddy Duck Press, 1992), and Bohemian Airs & Other Kêfs (Night Horn Books, 1982).

The collection contains sketchbooks, journals, handwritten and printed drafts of poems, screenplays, short stories, and longer works, notes, newspaper clippings, articles, printed publications, posters, pamphlets, resumes, an astrological chart, artworks, photographs, correspondence, ephemera, and publications published by Night Horn Books.

The papers span from 1974 to 2022 and document his work as a writer and publisher. Materials include his journals and sketchbooks from 1974 to 2019, which include his artwork, notes, and poetry. There are synopses, drafts, notebooks, and notes of two of his novels, "The Glittering Zero" and "Deep Blue Sea," as well as his poetry, short stories, and screenplays.

Aside from his written work, the collection contains correspondence between Anbian and other poets, personal handwritten notes, postcards to friends and family members, resumes, photographs, and artwork by Anbian. Works published by Wilderness Press and Night Horn Book, authored by Anbian and others, are also included. See External Documents for a detailed box-folder inventory of the collection's contents.

Biographical / historical:

"Robert Anbian (June 27, 1949 - February 23, 2022) wrote about sex, politics, seas and oceans, city streets, deserts, war, love, music, highways, petty larceny, ecstasy, childhood, death, and memories. His poems and stories are populated with the poor, lost, exiled, angry, crazy in love, and intoxicated... His syntax is mangled, his narrative a montage. He had little use for metaphor. He means exactly what he says. His texts are homespun, esoteric, oddly familiar and strange. He's discovering the music in language, in thought, in the cortex of consciousness. He's funny.

That Anbian, a leading voice in the San Francisco poetry underground, isn't more widely known is as much a tribute to his "odd man out" obstinacy as to the usual reluctance of society to deal with its critics. Yet obstinacy has a point. Anbian writes a poetry that won't surrender an inch of imaginative freedom to love, hate, or ideology – his own above all. With I NOT I (EDT4072), the word comes from the poet himself in a writer's voice – that is, in a language demotic, impassioned, and little peculiar. Included in this powerful follow-up to the 2007 poetry and jazz CD, Robert Anbian and the Unidentified Flying Quartet, also on Edgetone Records (EDT4052), is a sweeping selection from Anbian's epochal WE series, in a new sequence enacting the poems' contingent, open-ended form. This is an important recording for anyone interested in poetry, spoken word, literature, anti-literature, and the troubled junctures of culture and politics.

Robert Anbian published three poetry collections, WE Parts 1 & 2 (Night Horn Books 1999), Antinostalgia (Ruddy Duck Press 1992) and Bohemian Airs & Other Kêfs (Night Horn Books, 1982). His most recent publication is the chapbook, Blame the Powerful: Political Poems (War&Peace Press 2004). His work has appeared in the anthologies, Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Confront the Holocaust (Northwestern) and Practicing Angels: A Contemporary Anthology of San Francisco Bay Area Poetry (Seismograph), at www.newversenews.com, and in the literary periodicals City Lights Review, North Coast Literary Review, Oxygen, Left Curve, Oro Madre, Compages, and the electronic journal, Rif/t. From 1978-82, he edited the literary review, Oboe."

A native of New Jersey and graduate of the University of Virginia, and following his work in the Peace Corps, Anbian lived and worked as a journalist and editor in San Francisco. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1971, after which he spent three years in Niger with the Peace Corps from 1974 to 1977. He then relocated to San Francisco, where he worked as a writer and poet until his death. From 1985 to 1996, Robert served as the editor of the monthly Film Arts Foundation magazine, Release Print, and the publicist for an independent filmmaker education and advocacy group. He founded his own publishing house, Night Horn Books. Anbian published three poetry collections: WE Parts 1 & 2 (Night Horn Books, 1999), Antinostalgia (Ruddy Duck Press, 1992), and Bohemian Airs & Other Kêfs (Night Horn Books, 1982).

Source: "Robert Anbian" Edgetone Records website. Accessed 10/2/25 https://www.edgetonerecords.com/anbian.html

Acquisition information:
This collection was a gift from Patricia McLaughlin to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 19 December 2024.
Arrangement:

The collection is arranged by type of material and then by date. Series 1. Sketchbooks, Notebooks and manuscripts, Series 2. Correspondence, Series 3. Publications, Series 4. Reviews, Series 5. Burlington County Herald newspaper

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard