create a welcoming place and a distinguished collection that could encourage students, faculty and community members "to encounter poetry without intermediaries." In 1960 Robert Frost arrived in Tucson by train to read at the dedication of the new Poetry Center on November 17. Ruth Stephan presided at the dedication with Arizona Congressman Stewart Udall and University President Richard Harvill. During this historic visit, Congressman Udall asked Frost to consider reading a poem at John F. Kennedy's upcoming Presidential inauguration. For decades after her initial gift, Ruth Stephan made additional donations of land, stocks, cash and books to the Center. In 1963 the University of Arizona awarded Ruth Stephan an honorary PhD for "high achievement as a poet, novelist, translator and editor with an international reputation and as a sponsor and patron of imaginative literature." She served as an active member of the Center's Advisory Board until shortly before her death in 1974. The library collection Ruth Stephan seeded The Poetry Center's collection with a gift of several hundred books. Her collection focused on contemporary poetry in English and also included translations of great poets from around the world. In her "Notes on Establishing and Maintaining a Poetry Collection," Stephan wrote: The collection should consist of poetry, of biographies and bibliographies of poets, volumes of poets' letters and of prose and plays by poets. There should be no books of criticism or essays on poetry unless these books were written by poets: for example Francis Thompson's exquisite piece on Shelley, and T. S. Eliot's essays. Occasionally poets have written novels, as did William Carlos Williams, and these should be included for a rounded understanding of a poet." Ms. Stephan's founding collection of books includes works by Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Stanley Kunitz, W. H. Auden, John Berryman, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others, most of which are editions published in the 1940s and 1950s. Also included are a number of volumes of Asian and French poetry as well as classic works. Intending the collection to have national and international significance, Ms. Stephan regularly shopped for books for the Poetry Center on her journeys, and she urged the staff to acquire materials demonstrating the widest possible range of poetry, from its known beginnings in chants and song to contemporary experiments. According to Poetry Center annual reports, the collection grew by 100 volumes during the 1962-1963 academic year and had reached