ZYZZYVA 93 / San Francisco, CA
New England Review 32.3 / Middlebury, VT
DIAGRAM 11.4 / Tucson, AZ
Camera Obscura 3 / Addison, TX
Fiddleblack 2 / Peninsula, OH
Barrelhouse 9 / Washington, DC
Antioch Review Fall 2011 / Yellow Springs, OH
Birkensnake 4 / Providence, RI
Gigantic Sequins 2.2 / Philadelphia, PA
Paris Review 199 / Manhattan, NY
Bateau 4.2 / Northhampton, MA
6x6 24 / Brooklyn, NY
Brief comments on, and at times from, the lit mag world.
It took awhile before Jeanne finally corrected me about the pronunciation of her name. “It’s Jean-ie,” she said, kindly but firmly, as we were seated in her office looking over some manuscripts for the forthcoming issue of The Southern Review. I had been pronouncing it simply “Jean” all afternoon. My face reddened. Jeanne Leiby died on
Lewis Hyde writes in his book The Gift about CIA sponsorship of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad during the 1950s and 60s—a sponsorship that was made famous in recent years after it became more well known that founding editor Peter Mathiesson used The Paris Review as a cover while working for the CIA:
What is the best single issue of any literary magazine? We could spend paragraphs defining best: Is the word synonymous with favorite? (“Entropy” by Thomas Pynchon, one of my favorite short stories, appears in the Spring 1960 issue of The Kenyon Review, but is that enough to make the issue a classic?) Should we treat
“I was fascinated from about the age of eighteen by the notion, the abstract, almost Platonic notion of a physical thing that was at the same time a communal phenomenon….a symposium. A gathering. A party.” —Raymond Smith In the past years, literary magazines have lost some of their best editors—such as George Plimpton of The
Dear Online Literary Community, I’ve been thinking about what you said. After talking with friends and reading comments here and elsewhere, I want to respond to a few general things regarding my first Duckfoot proposal and then make another one. I’m committed to the idea that creative writing belongs in public discourse. I think we
Cinema has had a long history of influence on poetry. Pre-cinematic technology had an impact on the visual nature of Paradise Lost. Without the Cinematograph, there would doubtfully have been Imagism. And, like most of us, poets have long been fascinated with film—such as Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, Frank O’Hara, John Ashberry, Allen Ginsberg, and
My last three pieces have addressed some of the aesthetic results of the ever-increasing overlap between poetry readers and writers in relation to electronic and print journals. The first piece argued that there are more writers of poetry intended for a public audience than ever before, and that there are simultaneously more outlets for publication,
In the 50th anniversary issue of The Paris Review, Grand Street editor Ben Sonnenberg describes the literary magazine as a publishing endeavor continually at the mercy of money. What was the darkest moment of Grand Street? “When we ran out of money.” What is needed to keep a literary magazine alive? “Someone else’s money.” And
The Internet is a vibrant scene in relation to literary journals: every couple weeks on Duotrope, a few journals fledge and a few go inactive. The question is what all of the vibrancy adds up to. In the same period that there seem to be fewer poetry readers and more poetry writers than ever before,
While there are still plenty of print journals around, the ranks seem to be dwindling. While prestige-bias favoring print over electronic publication was/is tenacious, more and more print journals are going online. In addition, fledgling electronic journals are being started everyday, as the Internet allows anyone to start a journal at no or very little
