The Peseroff Cluster

The Peseroff Cluster refers to a currently held (as of November 2025) set of books within the archive that were signed by or inscribed or addressed to poet and longtime UMass Boston faculty member Joyce Peseroff. These texts form an emerging provenance network that reflects the gift economies, professional relationships, and small-press circulation that shaped literary culture between the 1990s to early 2000s at UMass Boston. Readers interested in exploring the materials involved may browse the books under “Copies Signed by the Author” on the Archive tab, or the 'Rare & Odd' category. Items connected to Peseroff will be clearly labeled in their individual entries. Other books in the archive may also be referred to, dependent on if Professor Peseroff's name shows up in an 'acknowledgments' list. This will take time to investigate all books individually and remains the logistical hurdle preventing a more immediate release. If, after release, further works are received which connect to the Peseroff Cluster a full rewrite will not be needed, but a simple footnote addendum will be added and dated. 

The current list of books is as follows:

A Dog In The Lifeboat by Peseroff (signed by Peseroff, her own work)

Mortal Education by Peseroff (signed by Peseroff, her own work)

Tightrope by Rooney (signed, dated, and inscribed to Peseroff by author)

Day Release by Rooney-Céspedes (signed, dated, and inscribed to Peseroff by author)

Bird Scarer by Sheldon (signed and inscribed to Peseroff by author)

The Kingdom of His will by Parnell (signed, dated, and inscribed to Peseroff by author)

Follow The Wolf Moon (published by UMass alumni, Peseroff listed in acknolwedgements)

(un)civil volume 1 issue 1 (lists Peseroff as faculty) 

Words And Images volume 1 issue 1 (contains letter directly addressed to Peseroff)

*** A small booklet of the memorial triubte to the life and poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, which explicitly mentions Professor Peseroff as one of the UMB faculty coordinators

This cluster is one of the archive’s earliest and most meaningful provenance groupings, given Professor Peseroff's presence and teaching within the UMass Boston MFA program. 

Please check back soon for the completed essay and analysis. You can access the field reports page which outline current logics and areas of research on this particular topic.  Below is a map of the Peseroff Cluster texts, and the relationships outlined by inscriptions, dedications, and acknowledgements found in them. 

***Addendum 11/26/25 The discovery of this booklet is primary documentation of UMB activity that ties the school to the broader, international, poetry community. It's discovery at 7 AM at the date of writing is perhaps one of the most important ephemera in the collection. It has not yet been uploaded to the archive tabs at the time of writing, and exists in the backlog stack for intial categorizing. Rest assured that the provenance maps will be updated accordingly to reflect this new discovery.