On the cover of a 1984 issue of Ondobondo, a male figure turns his back to readers, his gaze fixed on the chains in his hands. Dressed all in yellow,…
Contemporaries Essays
“We refused to stop publishing Cuban artists”
In 1962, Sergio Mondragón (b. 1935) and Margaret Randall (b. 1936) founded their literary journal El Corno Emplumado (The Plumed Horn) in Mexico City.1 A bilingual, transnational production, it stands out…
Trafficked! Indian-American little magazine networks and the Arvind Krishna Mehrotra / Howard McCord correspondence
Although Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is one of the most remarkable contemporary poets of India, he has consistently refused to be constricted by the obvious or prescribed signs of Indianness. One’s…
An Elegy for Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” (1984–1989)
The house of knowledge is bookended by a poetics of death. In issue one of Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” (1984-1989), the reader learns of two such passings. The…
Duende: The Real Heart of What’s Going On
I. So far in my learning through the Little Magazine in America Collection at University of Denver (DU) Libraries, my process has been this: mapless, I make my way through…
Poets, Companions, Guides (& Authenticity)
A couple of years ago, at the height of the first summer of the pandemic, when it felt like the world was coming apart at the seams (or, at least,…
New York City Poetics and the Idea of the Mimeograph Revolution: Reflections on Teaching
The mimeograph revolution arrives just after the half-way point of my ten-week advanced undergraduate course entitled “‘multiple voices’: New York City Poetics 1960-1985,” which I teach at the University of…
Asterisms Among the Magazines
murmurations Recent studies in animal movement modelling suggest that groups such as starlings aren’t acting on organized herd mentalities, but that individuals “sought to match the direction and speed of the…
Hardbound Idiom: Convergences in Umbra Vol. I, No. I, 1963
” . . . exploring coloration and penumbralight-wise coloration magnifies what I seeand eclipse coloration here dense pitch densebeauty all light your halo opened out of darkness your good dense…
“Key to a Savage Sideshow”: The Magazines of the Occult School of Boston
“The school of Boston in poetry, middle this century,” wrote Gerrit Lansing in 1968, “is an occult school, unknown.”1 For this school, comprised of the poets Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser,…