Kurt Von­negut once com­ment­ed, in an inter­view with Joseph Heller, that the best audi­ence he had ever encoun­tered was at the 92^nd Street Y in New York. “Those peo­ple know every­thing. They are wide awake and respon­sive.”

Locat­ed at the cor­ner of 92^nd Street and Lex­ing­ton Avenue, the 92Y has a ven­er­a­ble his­to­ry of pub­lic per­for­mance, con­ver­sa­tion, poet­ry and beyond. Von­negut him­self appeared at the 92Y sev­en times to read aloud from his own work. (Includ­ing this read­ing from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons three years before the book was pub­lished.)

Cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming has been a focus at the 92Y since it opened in 1874. Orig­i­nal­ly, it served most­ly Ger­man-Jew­ish men (note, it isn’t a YMCA, but a YM-YWHA—Young Men’s and Women’s Hebrew Asso­ci­a­tion). But the Kauf­mann Con­cert Hall opened in 1930, and that’s where a ver­i­ta­ble Who’s Who of not­ed enter­tain­ment, pol­i­tics, sports, and sci­ence fig­ures have appeared over the years, speak­ing to that “wide awake and respon­sive” audi­ence.

Lucky for the rest of us, the 92Y record­ed the vast major­i­ty of those per­for­mances. And now 1,000 record­ings appear on a new site, 92Y On Demand. It’s a fan­tas­tic archive of audio and video files, search­able by top­ic, year or per­former name.

It’s all there: Yogi Berra look­ing back on his life and career. A 1961 read­ing by a young Nadine Gordimer. Harold Pin­ter read­ing his own short sto­ries and weigh­ing in on the Bea­t­les vs. the Rolling Stones. Andrés Segovia play­ing a clas­si­cal gui­tar recital. Lou Reed speak­ing on the eve of his live per­for­mance of Berlin (top). Bil­ly Crys­tal (below) on roast­ing Muham­mad Ali.

92Y is home to the Unter­berg Poet­ry Cen­ter, so the new archive abounds with poet­ry read­ings. Dylan Thomas read there in 1953. Two years ear­li­er play­wright Thorn­ton Wilder appeared and read from Emi­ly Dickinson’s work. And clos­er to our own time, Paul McCart­ney recent­ly read from his own poet­ry.

See many more cel­e­brat­ed fig­ures such as Maria Bam­ford, Mau­rice Sendak, Dan Sav­age, Junot Díaz and Jamaica Kin­caid read and dis­cuss their work at 92Y On Demand.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kurt Vonnegut’s Very First Pub­lic Read­ing from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons (1970)

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

Allen Gins­berg Gets Heck­led by Beat Poet Gre­go­ry Cor­so at a 1973 Poet­ry Read­ing

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

Per­haps the most famous of all lit­er­ary reclus­es, despite her­self, Emi­ly Dick­in­son left a posthu­mous­ly dis­cov­ered cache of poet­ry that did not receive a prop­er schol­ar­ly treat­ment until the pub­li­ca­tion of The Poems of Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Thomas H. John­son in 1955, which made avail­able Dickinson’s com­plete body of 1,775 poems in their intend­ed state of punc­tu­a­tion and cap­i­tal­iza­tion. For the first time, read­ers out­side the small Dick­in­son fam­i­ly cir­cle could read the work she cir­cu­lat­ed pri­vate­ly in so-called “fas­ci­cles” as well as the hun­dreds of poems no one had seen dur­ing her life­time.  There is some ques­tion over whether Dick­in­son wished to pub­lish for a wider audi­ence. She shared her work only with fam­i­ly and friends, some of whom pub­lished ten of her poems in news­pa­pers between 1850 and 1866, most like­ly with­out her knowl­edge or con­sent. Many urged Dick­in­son to pub­lish. Author Helen Hunt Jack­son wrote to her: “You are a great poet—and it is a wrong to the day you live in, that you will not sing aloud.” Nev­er­the­less, Dick­in­son “hes­i­tat­ed,” an impor­tant word in her lex­i­con, expres­sive of her pro­found agnos­tic doubts about the val­ue of fame, suc­cess, and immor­tal­i­ty.

Pos­si­bly due to the lack of schol­ar­ly inter­est before Johnson’s col­lec­tion, Dickinson’s trove of man­u­script drafts has remained scat­tered across sev­er­al archives, send­ing researchers hoof­ing it to sev­er­al insti­tu­tions to view the poet’s hand­i­work. As of today, that will no longer be nec­es­sary with the inau­gu­ra­tion of the online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive, “an open-access web­site for the man­u­scripts of Emi­ly Dick­in­son” that brings togeth­er thou­sands of man­u­scripts held by Har­vard, Amherst, the Boston Pub­lic Library, the Library of Con­gress, and four oth­er col­lec­tions. Though noth­ing can sub­sti­tute for the almost mys­ti­cal feel­ing of being in the phys­i­cal pres­ence of a favorite author’s arti­facts, the site is an enor­mous boon to schol­ars and lay read­ers alike, since it is open to any­one, unlike most spe­cial col­lec­tions in uni­ver­si­ty libraries (although brows­ing the thou­sands of hand­writ­ten images can be exhaust­ing unless one knows what to look for).

As The New York Times describes it, the archives’ cre­ation led to some dis­sention among par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions. For the past year, Amherst has main­tained an online data­base of their Dick­in­son col­lec­tion (includ­ing the man­u­script of “The way Hope builds his house,” above). Har­vard has been more reluc­tant to make its man­u­scripts avail­able. Nev­er­the­less, the project’s gen­er­al edi­tor, Leslie M. Mor­ris, says that the aim of the archive “was to down­play the issue of own­er­ship and focus on Emi­ly Dick­in­son and her man­u­scripts.” No behind the scenes wran­gling seems to have inter­fered with the website’s ease of use. Read­ers can search the text of man­u­script images or browse images by library col­lec­tion, first line, date, recip­i­ent (of let­ters), or edi­tion. The site also includes a “Lex­i­con,” with def­i­n­i­tions of the poet­’s favorite words from her own dic­tio­nary, Webster’s 1844 Amer­i­can Dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage, and users can also search for poems by word. All in all it’s an impres­sive project made all the more so by its free avail­abil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sec­ond Known Pho­to of Emi­ly Dick­in­son Emerges.

Hear Walt Whit­man (Maybe) Read­ing the First Four Lines of His Poem, “Amer­i­ca” (1890)

Penn Sound: Fan­tas­tic Audio Archive of Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Poets

The James Mer­rill Dig­i­tal Archive Lets You Explore the Cre­ative Life of a Great Amer­i­can Poet

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness