The Boar's Head Society (1910 â 1970s) was a student conversazione society devoted to poetry at Columbia University. It was an "adjunct to Columbia College's Philolexian Society ... The purpose of their new society was entirely creative: reading and commenting on each other's works."
John Erskine, English professor, formed the society. This connected the society through him to Columbia's student literary magazine, The Morningside Review (founded first as the Literary Monthly in 1815, renamed by Erskine in 1898, and renamed the Columbia Review in 1932). In 1931, it claimed to be the only organization on campus "devoted exclusively to poetry."
The society seems to have started during the 1909âÂÂ1910 academic schoolyear, as in November 1909 it sponsored theatrical productions of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.
The society also held annual literary competitions and then published winners in the magazine. Competition judges included William Carlos Williams (and Lionel Trilling). Winners included John Berryman, Terrence McNally, John Hollander, and Allen Ginsberg.
At some point, the magazine took over the competition from the society.
Student members included:
The April 1935 issue of the Columbia Review, Lionel Trilling wrote "Boar's Heart: 25 Years" and Mark Van Doren wrote a "Note on Poetry".
In 2006, Hoffman reminisced, "When I returned to Columbia after the Second World War, I joined the Boar's Head Society, which was a little group of poets. In those days, colleges didn't like poets to do anything, so we ponied up the hundred bucks and invited him" (W. H. Auden).