This collection starts with correspondence and includes letters from colleagues and fellow writers, which offer valuable information on writing and publishing, from finding work and applying for grants to the writing process and getting published. Colleagues and former students sometimes included copies of their work in their correspondence for Reiss to read over and critique, while Reiss did the same with his new work. Reiss also wrote and received many congratulatory letters in response to new poems or books recently published. The collection also includes a large amount of correspondence from publishers, whether they were rejecting, accepting, or soliciting work, and offers information on the publishing process.

The correspondence also contains letters of a more personal nature, including holiday cards, post cards and letters to and from family. These family letters, covering a range of topics from visits, to health and family disputes, provide insight and background into Reiss's more autobiographical poems. Letters from friends and colleagues sometimes contain a combination of both personal and professional matters. James Reiss's correspondents include Rita Dove, John Irving and Philip Schultz, among many others.

The collection also includes correspondence and papers from Reiss's time as a Professor of English at Miami University, and covers a wide range of subjects from class schedules and course loads to setting up and teaching workshops, materials covered in class, and the creation of a Miami University Press poetry series.

The bulk of the collection is made up of manuscript materials. As a writer, James Reiss had a specific system for filing his work. Both working copies and final versions of the poems were kept in folders separated by year, ranging from 1969-2007. Many of the poems have the corresponding month and day noted. The poems, both handwritten and typed, were often composed on the back of other poems, student work and even correspondence. The working copies together with the final versions, give valuable insight into Reiss's working style as a writer. Sometimes he would make several photocopies of a poem and then make changes and corrections by hand. Other times he would take an entire piece of paper to simply rework a single line of a poem, over and over, till he got it right. He would also change or re-purpose rejected titles. Many times a line that was cut from one poem would end up in another.

Interspersed with the poems are journal entries and notes. Many of these discuss Reiss's writing and feelings, family matters, daily life, publishing and Reiss's career. Often the journal entries served as a type of "warm-up" or automatic writing that Reiss would use at the beginning of a writing session and can include what Reiss was hoping to accomplish with his writing and how he felt about his work.

The collection also includes a small amount of miscellaneous unpublished writings, not included in Reiss's year by year filing system, including introductions written by Reiss, juvenilia, short stories, plays, visual poetry and drawings. Also included in the collection is Reiss's line-editing work on the translations from Hebrew of his estranged brother's poetry.

The collection contains published material as well. Reviews both written by and about Reiss and articles written by and about Reiss are included within the collection, along with a scrapbook of newspaper clippings collected by Reiss.

The collection also includes photographs, consisting of family and friends, colleagues, book and retirement parties, travel, and publicity headshots.

The rest of the collection is made up of miscellaneous materials and includes items such as pamphlets from Miami University, financial receipts and paystubs from publishers, announcements, writings by others, the journals of Reiss's mother and father, awards and plaques and even a lock of Reiss's first wife's hair.