This year the storied Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary. The first in a series of events to mark the occasion, an exhibition called Love the Words—which includes more than eighty archival photos, letters, and ephemera detailing the Poetry Center's history—will be on display at the 92nd Street Y's Weill Art Gallery until November 25. The following is a collection of photos from the exhibit, featuring some of the most influential poets and writers to have graced the Unterberg stage.
Allen Ginsberg gives a reading at the Unterberg Poetry Center in 1970.
Donald Barthelme and Grace Paley, both known most widely for their short fiction, backstage at Unterberg in 1971.
Gwendolyn Brooks—who won a Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1950 and was named the poet laureate of Illinois in 1968—at the Poetry Center in 1971.
John Ashbery, the winner of the Poetry Center's inaugural Boston Review/"Discovery" Prize, in 1970.
Poets Marianne Moore and W. H. Auden at the Poetry Center in 1966.
Poet Pablo Neruda at Unterberg in 1972.
Poet Seamus Heaney relaxing backstage in 1971.
Poet W. H. Auden backstage in 1966.