Synopses & Reviews
Little magazines have often showcased the best new writing in America. Historically, these idiosyncratic, small-circulation outlets have served the dual functions of representing the avant-garde of literary expression while also helping many emerging writers become established authors. Although changing technology and the increasingly harsh financial realities of publishing over the past three decades would seem to have pushed little magazines to the brink of extinction, their story is far more complicated.
In this collection, Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz gather the reflections of twenty-three prominent editors whose little magazines have flourished over the past thirty-five years. Highlighting the creativity and innovation driving this diverse and still vital medium, contributors offer insights into how their publications sometimes succeeded, sometimes reluctantly folded, but mostly how they evolved and persevered. Other topics discussed include the role of little magazines in promoting the work and concerns of minority and women writers, the place of universities in supporting and shaping little magazines, and the online and offline future of these publications.
Selected contributors
Betsy Sussler, BOMB; Lee Gutkind, Creative Nonfiction; Bruce Andrews, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E; Dave Eggers, McSweeneyand#8217;s; Keith Gessen, n+1; Don Share, Poetry; Jane Friedman, VQR; Amy Hoffman, Womenand#8217;s Review of Books; and more.
and#160;
Review
Rich with smart, deft scenesplaces you may not have been before,
exactly, but feel strangely at home in. Congratulations to this transporting, potent, poet.”Naomi Shihab Nye, Brittingham Prize judge
Review
Forged of equal parts brains and brass, these poems bleed and shine and all but blind us. How wild they are, how beautiful! I love the way Joanne Diaz uses light and noise to tell us more than any history book can of the tyrants who distort yet give meaning to our lives: Castro, Stalin, our teachers, our parents, ourselves.”David Kirby
Review
Exquisitely attentive to the given world, to history, to the human heart, to the cadence of words: the poems in this volume share all the virtues of Joanne Diazs earlier work. What is new is the freer discursive range and the sharpened abutments of tenderness and astringency. Elegy meets social satire in these pages, the TSA watch list meets an elegant Persian poetic form. In the world these poems refuse to disown, sorrow smells like Lysol in the toilet stalls and bounty is undaunted by formica: it's a joy to see how largeness of spirit and clear-eyed penetration can sustain one another. Her favorite tyrants? Above all, the dictates of memory and love.”Linda Gregerson
Review
and#8220;The Little Magazine in Contemporary America is an important bookand#8212;one that is long overdue. It provides a different perspective on the role of little magazines that is valuable and not readily available anywhere elsewhere. Particularly impressive are Jane Friedmanand#8217;s and Don Shareand#8217;s essays, which wrap up the entire volume brilliantly, both giving a sense of the potential for independent magazines in the future while acknowledging the rich history of the past.and#8221;
Review
Hive is a joyride in a fast car that sometimes gets pulled over by a man in a suit with a Bible in his hand. Read these poems and youll know what Im talking about!”Lucia Perillo, Brittingham Prize judge
Review
Hive investigates the intersections of religion, race, class, and sexuality with grace and knowing. This is a revisiting of a Pacific Northwest that we often forget in our rush toward nostalgiawhile the world was busy lauding the grunge scene, women went missing in the woods, and children died in the streets. Stoddards exquisite craft never forgets the errand: she raises the dead and offers full tribute and salve for those of us who have survived it.”TJ Jarrett, author of
Aint No GraveReview
Christina Stoddards stunning first collection begins in ruin and the buzz of gathering flies. And that buzz grows into a more and more menacing hum in a journey through rapes and murders, through stray bullets and serial killers, through mental and physical and emotional and sexual and even spiritual abuse until the voice speaking the poems seems to come from a mouth / fill[ed] with swarm. Yet in the end, miraculouslyby their sheer courageous existencethese fierce poems soothe as much as they sting.”Dan Albergotti, author of
Millennial TeethReview
andquot;Little magazines, known for their experimental nature and independent spirit, are the focus of this absorbing collection of essays, written by leading editors working over the past thirty years.and#160;This fascinating anthology brings to life the literary, cultural, and political landscapes intrinsic to avant-garde publications and deepens our understanding of their immense significance.and#160;This book takes its rightful place on library shelves next to earlier classicsand#160;
The Little Magazine: A History and Bibliographyand#160;andand#160;
The Little Magazine in America.and#160;and#160;Itandrsquo;s an indispensable tool for scholars and a great read!andquot;
Review
andquot;Little magazines are crucial to the literary health of our country. Today, we are inundated with a bottom-line publishing ideal. In the face of conglomerate money culture, we need our littles more than ever. This book is essential.andquot;
Review
andquot;At the zenith of print culture, modernist writers aspired to renew civilization or dynamite it, to subvert consumer capitalism or make a name or a buck from it, in a relatively new print genreandmdash;the little magazine. Morris and Diaz have now asked a score of the little magazine editors and writers who have shaped our own literary culture to reflect on the present and future of the genre andldquo;during the most radical paradigm shift since the invention of movable type.andrdquo; This collection reassures us that the internet not only affords new modes of writing and reading but also leaves plenty of room for print experimentsandmdash;from zines and boxes of printed documents to the survivals of modernist-era or university-based magazines.and#160; Future readers will look back toand#160;
The Little Magazine in Contemporary Americaand#160;as a key document of the American literary periodicals of our age.andquot;
Review
andquot;The Little Magazine in Contemporary Americaand#160;is a fascinating set of responses to the two great changes in writing and reading since 1980.and#160; The first is the internet, which has given a new face to the drive of letters toward action-for-change, enabling immediate distribution of readersandrsquo; insights in answer to the work of artistsandmdash;and in answer to postings by other web readers.and#160; A little magazine today can speak to audiences who never read the magazine itself; they can gather around the magazineandrsquo;s comment sites for warmth, argument, and validation. The second great change in the world of letters during the past 35 years isand#160;the transformative effect of creative nonfiction as a cross-genre mode.and#160; For it has encouraged heady mixtures and a renewal of rhetorical poise in the art of many fine poets and prose writers, breathing delight into the work of making it new.andquot;
Review
"Centaur testifies to the grave fact that humans can harm each other until they want to trade in their bodies: 'I want to feel alive,' says the man seeking to become a centaur as the book begins. This is a masterful poetic debut marked by lyric brilliance and difficult, yet gleaming, wisdom."—Katie Ford, author of Colosseum
Review
"The terrific, turbulent poems in Greg Wrenn's Centaur seem as much etched as written—acid-exact, black promises on white possibilities, lines and space crosshatched with thrilling precision. These poems will startle you at first, and then haunt you long after."—J. D. McClatchy, editor of The Yale Review and author of Hazmat
Review
"These powerful poems mark the aliveness, suffering, and sensuality of the body. They map out erotic adventures and the loneliness of human need. They flout danger with superb lyric craft. But they don't stop there. Each poem offers a paradigm of yearning held together by a rare excellence of language and music. This is a marvelous debut collection."—Eavan Boland, author of A Journey with Two Maps
Review
"The magic here, like the best magic, transforms with each encounter. Fluid, tempered, atmospheric: Centaur is a beautiful, encompassing debut."—Terrance Hayes, Brittingham Prize judge and National Book Award winner
Review
“Greg Wrenn’s poems are quietly allusive and deep; his completely original style . . . perhaps shows the direction our poetry is headed during this new era of the written word’s ascendancy.”—
The Antioch ReviewReview
“[Diaz’s] poems are nakedly aware of political realities while possessed of an urgent grace.”—
Library JournalReview
andquot;The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, a much more manageable collection of interviews and essays that was published in April, looks at the years since then, the years that includedandmdash;so say the bookandrsquo;s editors, Ian Morris and Joanne Diazandmdash; andldquo;the end of the ascendancy of print periodicals,andrdquo; meaning that the best small litmags have moved online....A new journal needs a reason to exist: a gap that earlier journals failed to fill, a new form of pleasure, a new kind of writing, an alliance with a new or under-chronicled social movement, a constellation of authors for whom the future demand for work exceeds present supply, a program that will actually change some small part of some literary readersandrsquo; tastes. None of this has changed with the rise of the Web. Nor has the other big truth about little magazines which emerges from Diaz and Morrisandrsquo;s book, or from a day spent with anybody who runs one: itandrsquo;s exhausting, albeit exciting, to do it yourself.andquot;
Review
andldquo;A thoughtful and much-needed champion of the vitality and creativity of literary journals today.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Itandrsquo;s been thirty-five years since the last comprehensive examination of little magazines, during which time the advent of the Internet and evolving publishing constrictions have presented unique challenges to these little engines that could. Morris and Diazandrsquo;s anthologyandhellip;addresses these challenges and the ways in which many little magazines have turned them into advantages, including the opportunity for more and specialized promotion and differentiation. Public discussion and debate is essential to literary and artistic work, and these essays speak to the opportunity for this collective conversation to reach a wider audience in the digital age.
The Little Magazine in Contemporary America is a welcome and compelling update, one that offers substantive hope for the future and continued significance of its subject.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Winner of the 2014 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab NyeThe word “tyrant” carries negative connotations, but in this new collection, Joanne Diaz tries to understand what makes tyranny so compelling, even seductive. These dynamic, funny, often poignant poems investigate the nature of tyranny in all of its forms—political, cultural, familial, and erotic. Poems about Stalin, Lenin, and Castro appear beside poems about deeply personal histories. The result is a powerful exploration of desire, grief, and loss in a world where private relationships are always illuminated and informed by larger, more despotic forces.
· Finalist, Poetry category of the Midwest Book Awards, Midwest Independent Publishers Association
Synopsis
In this bitingly funny and often surprising memoir, award-winning author and groundbreaking comedian Bob Smith offers a meditation on the vitality of the natural world--and an intimate portrait of his own darkly humorous and profoundly authentic response to a life-changing illness.
In Treehab--named after a retreat cabin in rural Ontario--Smith muses how he has "always sought the path less traveled." He rebuffs his diagnosis of ALS as only an unflappable stand-up comic could ("Lou Gehrig's Disease? But I don't even like baseball ") and explores his complex, fulfilling experience of fatherhood, both before and after the onset of the disease.
Stories of his writing and performing life--punctuated by hilariously cutting jokes that comedians tell only to each other--are interspersed with tales of Smith's enduring relationship with nature: boyhood sojourns in the woods of upstate New York and adult explorations of the remote Alaskan wilderness; snakes and turtles, rocks and minerals; open sky and forest canopy; God and friendship--all recurring touchstones that inspire him to fight for his survival and for the future of his two children.
Aiming his potent, unflinching wit at global warming, equal rights, sex, dogs, Thoreau, and more, Smith demonstrates here the inimitable insight that has made him a beloved voice of a generation. He reminds us that life is perplexing, beautiful, strange, and entirely worth celebrating.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2014 Brittingham Prize in Poetry Crossing many geographies and eras, the poems of My Favorite Tyrants lyrically explore why tyranny is so compelling, even seductive. Joanne Diazs powerful and provocative collection is marked by the exploration of desire, grief, and loss in a world where private relationships are always illuminated by larger, more despotic forces.
Synopsis
Hive is a remarkable debut collection of poems about brutality, exaltation, rebellion, and allegiance. Written in the voice of a teenage Mormon girl, these poems wrestle with the widening gulf between her impulse toward faith and her growing doubts about the people who claim to know Gods will.
Synopsis
Greg Wrenn's debut collection opens with a long poem in which a man undergoes surgery to become a centaur. Other poems speak in voices as varied as those of Robert Mapplethorpe, Hercules, and a Wise Man at the birth of Jesus. Centaur skitters along the blurred lines between compulsivity and following one's heart, stasis and self-realization, human and animal. Here, suffering and transcendence are restlessly conjoined.
About the Author
Ian Morris has taught courses on literature, writing, and publishing at Lake Forest College in Illinois and Columbia College Chicago. He was managing editor of TriQuarterly magazine for over a decade and is the founding editor of Fifth Star Press and the author of the novel When Bad Things Happen to Rich People.Joanne Diaz is associate professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. She was an assistant editor at TriQuarterly and is the author of two collections of poetry, The Lessons and My Favorite Tyrants.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
I
Bodies of Two Girls Found in Woods
Party Where Maureen Pierced Everyone’s Ears
This Time the Marina
The Oxford Unabridged
At Little George’s House, the Christmas Lights
Stayed Up All Year
I Am Thinking of Salmon
Hive
The Profession of the Whale
Jacks
Abby’s Mother Shows Us Where Ted Bundy
Signed Her Yearbook
Maureen
I Ask My Father If the Green River Killer’s Victims
Go to Heaven
II
Fifteen Girls
Help Thou Mine Unbelief
Appetite
Tuesdays at Young Women’s Activity Night
Goldfish
The Man Who Built My Basement Bedroom
Grandmother Educates Her Darlings
Westward On the Dance Floor a Chaperone
Ownership
How to Make Up for Unhealthy Habits
Korihor the Anti-Christ
Excommunication
III
Our Mother Who Art in Heaven
What Tacoma Was
Raped Girl’s Mad Song
High School Yearbook
I Must Return to the Company of Saints
Some Ungodly Hour
Let It Come to Pass
Thistle
The Origin of the Ampersand
Judges Chapter 4
God Made Everything Out of Nothing, But the Nothingness Shows Through
Antigone Inverse
When My Mother Asks Me to Write Something
Nice, I Can’t
What It Is to Sin
What If God Had Said It Differently