Site Archives

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

Ondobondo‘s Visual Publics: Small Print Culture in Papua New Guinea

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, Little Magazines

“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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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,…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Little Magazines

“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,…