The collection consists primarily of manuscript material and correspondence of Ortiz de Montellano. The collection includes notes, typed manuscripts, with holograph corrections, of poems, short stories, essays, and book reviews by Ortiz de Montellano. The collection also includes typed manuscript copies of poetry and essays by authors such as Amado Nervo, Manuel José Othon, and Alfonso Reyes. There is extensive correspondence with Mexican poets and writers Genaro Estrada, Alfonso Reyes, Jaime Torres Bodet, and José Gorostiza, and with translators Francis de Miomandre, Valéry Larbaud, Dudley Fitts, and Edna Worthley Underwood. There is a small amount of material related to the publication of the magazine Contemporáneos and a large amount of printed material related to Ortiz de Montellano and others' published work. The strengths of the collection are the large number of published and unpublished poems of Ortiz de Montellano, his essays and notes on the aesthetics of poetry, the original letters of Ortiz de Montellano and four Mexican poets (Cuesta, Gorostiza, Torres Bodet, and Villaurrutia), and Ortiz de Montellano's correspondence with Estrada, Reyes, Torres Bodet, Gorostiza, Mariano Azuela, and José Vasconcelos.