Category Archives: N

New American Writing

Magazines & Presses

New American Writing

Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff
Chicago, Illinois and Mill Valley, California

Nos. 1– (1986–). Ongoing.

Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff (1–32); Paul Hoover (33–).

New American Writing 1 (1986). Cover by Darragh Park.


Founded in 1986, New American Writing is a literary magazine emphasizing contemporary American poetry. Edited by Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff, it appears once a year in early June. The magazine is distinctive for publishing a range of innovative writing. Now in its thirty-fourth issue, it has been edited solely by Paul Hoover since issue 33 (2015).

New American Writing 2 (1987). Cover by Larry Rivers.

Issues have included cover art by leading artists, including Enrique Chagoya, Bill Viola, Alex Katz, Larry Rivers, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jennifer Bartlett, Elizabeth Murray, Fairfield Porter, and Joe Brainard. Contributors have included John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Charles Simic, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Fanny Howe, Rosmarie Waldrop, Nathaniel Mackey, Marjorie Perloff, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, Cole Swensen, Elizabeth Robinson, Donald Revell, Hoa Nguyen, Claudia Keelan, Gillian Conoley, Karen Volkman, Ben Lerner, and Noah Eli Gordon, among others. (A more complete list of contributors follows.) Contributors have frequently been included in the annual anthology, The Best American Poetry (Scribners), edited by poet and critic David Lehman and a distinguished guest editor. Work from the magazine has also appeared in the distinguished Pushcart Anthology. In 1988 the magazine was named one of the nation’s ten outstanding literary magazines by the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. In 2001, the magazine was honored at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park for thirty continuous years of publication, including Oink!

The magazine has enjoyed partial financial support from Columbia College Chicago and San Francisco State University.

— Paul Hoover, Mill Valley, California, September 2016

New American Writing 29 (2011). Cover photo by Anna Gaskell.

 

Special Issues and Features

A supplement of Australian poetry edited by John Tranter (no. 4).

An issue on Censorship and the Arts (no. 5) at the time of Jesse Helms’s attempt to disband the NEA.

Innovative poetry from Great Britain edited by Ric Caddel (no. 9/10).

Modern and contemporary Brazilian poetry edited by Régis Bonvicino (no. 18), featuring work by Murilo Mendes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Mário Faustino, Paulo Leminski, Julio Castañon Guimãres, Horácio Costa, Régis Bonvicino, Josely Vianna Baptista, Carlito Azevedo, Claudia Roquette-Pinto, Antonio Moura, Anibal Cristobo, and Tarso M. de Melo.

A special feature on Clark Coolidge, edited by Tom Orange (no. 19).

OBERIU: Russian Absurdism of the 1930s, edited by Eugene Ostashevsky and translated by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich, featuring Daniil Kharms, Alexandr Vvedensky, and Nikolai Zabolotsky (no. 20).

The Poetry of Tymoteusz Karpowicz, edited and with an introduction by Frank Kujawinski and Tomasz Tabako (no. 20).

Richter 858 Poets, edited by David Breskin: poems written on a series of eight abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter: W. S. Di Piero, Dean Young, Ann Lauterbach, Richard Howard, Paul Hoover, David Breskin, Connie Deanovich, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Michael Palmer, James McManus, Edward Hirsch, and Jorie Graham, based on a show and public reading at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (no. 21).

Three Contemporary Chinese Poets, edited by Wang Ping: Che Qianzi, Yu Jian, Jia Wei, translated by Wang Ping and, in sequence, Ron Padgett, Lewis Warsh, and Alex Lemon (no. 22).

The New Canadian Poetry, edited by Todd Swift: Lisa Robertson, Jason Camlot, George Murray, Christian Bök, Sina Queyras, Tammy Armstrong, Carmine Starnino, Louise Bak, David McGimpsey, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Nathalie Stevens, John Stiles, Mark Cochrane, Paul Vermeersch, Lisa Pasold, Ken Babstock, Bill Kennedy, and Darren Werschler-Henry (no. 23).

Nine Contemporary Vietnamese Poets, edited by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover: Dang Dinh Hung, Van Cao, Hoang Hung, Thanh Thao, Nguyen Do, Nhat Le, Nguyen Quang Thieu, Nhat Le, Vi Thuy Linh, and Nguyen Duy (no. 23).

Five Contemporary Greek Poets, edited by Valerie Coulton and Ed Smallfield: Mairi Alexopoulou, Phoebe Giannisi, Katerina Iliopoulou, Socrates Kabouropoulos, and Vassilis Manoussakis (no. 28).

Eleven Poets from Quebec, edited by François Luong: François Turcot, Renée Gagnon, Steve Savage, Annie LaFleur, Oana Avasilichioaei, Chantal Neveu, Alexis Lussier, Angela Carr, Alain Farah, Daniel Canty, and Hector Ruiz (no. 29).

Nine Mexican Poets (Alejandro Tarrab, Óscar de Pablo, Juan Carlos Bautista, Sara Uribe, Yaxkin Melchy, María Rivera, Óscar David López, John Gibler, and Cristina Rivera-Garza), edited by Cristina Rivera-Garza (no. 31).


North Country Medicine

Magazines & Presses

North Country Medicine

Albert Glover
Canton, New York

Nos. 1–6; Bulletins, nos. 1–3, and a “Christmas Letter” (1971)

North Country Medicine Bulletin 1 (n.d.). This issue was sent to Seamus Cooney and is postmarked August 17, 1972.

north-coutry-medicine-bulletin-1


In the fall of 1970 I purchased a Gestetner 460 mimeograph machine, an electronic stencil maker, and a black IBM Selectric II typewriter with money provided by the Ford Foundation via the Dean’s Office at St. Lawrence University. With this equipment I planned to participate in “the mimeograph revolution” which had been underway for more than a decade. The first project I undertook was an occasional newsletter called North Country Medicine which appeared in six issues during the year. Printed in black ink on 8½ x 11 white duplicating paper, each issue was between 7 and 9 pages, folded in half, stapled, and mailed out to thirty or so friends.

A North Country Medicine mailing envelope.

A North Country Medicine mailing envelope.

Issue 1, “in the present cosmic epoch there is a creation of continuity,” contains a long passage from Briffault’s The Mothers which begins: “Words, then, are primitively regarded as much more than mere signs, and the power of speech is far from being but a means of communicating ideas….” The issue also contains Gary Snyder’s “A Curse / On the Men in Washington, Pentagon” and Suhrawardi’s “The Red Intelligence” translated by Michael Bylebyl.

Issue 2, “to a multiplicity of ways & a singleness of mind,” featured a reprint of Hans Guterbok’s “The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod” and R. Cumberland’s translation of “Sanconiatho’s Phoenician History” from the first book of Eusebius’s De Praeparations Evangelica.

Issue 4, “A Companion for Lovers,” presents Suhrawardi’s text “On the Essence of Love” translated by Michael Bylebyl.

Issue 5, “scholarship is what art and culture build on,” contains Don Makosky’s translation of Karl Meuli’s “Herodotus’ Account of Scythian Shamans” from Scythica (1935) and Anselm Hollo’s poem “that old sauna high.”

Issue 6, “Seven Akkadian Cylinder Seals at the Buffalo Museum of Natural History,” transcribed by Albert Glover with a cover image by Guy Berard, was never distributed.

North Country Medicine 6 (January 1972). This issue was never distributed.

North Country Medicine 6 (January 1972). This issue was never distributed.

Issues 1–5 were later gathered and bound together in wrappers printed by Roger Bailey from a photograph by Guy Berard. Very few made.

In addition to the newsletter, I printed and distributed three “Bulletins” and a “Christmas Letter” in the same format. Bulletin 1: two poems by John Clarke and an advertisement for A Curriculum of the Soul. Bulletin 2: “WEKWOM TEKS-“ a short dialog on etymology and language by “Jacob Lititz” (Jake Leed). Bulletin 3: a few sections from Loba by Diane di Prima. “Christmas Letter, 1971,” a reprint of a letter from D. H. Lawrence to Gordon Campbell, dated December 19, 1914.

Albert Glover, Canton, New York, 2016


New Wilderness Letter

magazines & Presses

New Wilderness Letter

Jerome Rothenberg
New York

Nos. 1–13 (1977–85).

Volume numbers are also used through vol. 2, no. 8. Nos. 12 and 13 issued with Wch Way nos. 5 and 6 respectively.

New Wilderness Letter 1 (1977).

new-wilderness-letter-no-1


A follow-up to Alcheringa and an offshoot of the New Wilderness Foundation (formed by Jerome Rothenberg and Charlie Morrow to “explore the relation between old & new forms of art-making”), New Wilderness Letter, edited by Rothenberg, offered the following opening statement: “The editor—a poet by inclination & practice—recognizes poesis in all arts & sciences, all human thoughts & acts directed toward such ends: the participation in what the surrealist master André Breton called a ‘sacred action’ or what Gary Snyder defined as the ‘real work of modern man: to uncover the inner structure & actual boundaries of the mind.’ The New Wilderness Letter will therefore not be specialized & limited by culture or profession but will be a report, largely through the creative work itself, of where that process takes us.” That process led to some very interesting places indeed. Issues were devoted to such topics as the “role of poets/artists as ‘technicians of the sacred,’” “writing and reading as co-existent with human origins,” “poetics and performance,” “dream-works,” and, for issue 11, coedited with David Guss, “The Book, Spiritual Instrument.” Among the diverse contributors to the various issues are Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Einzig, Allen Ginsberg, Pauline Oliveros, Michael McClure, Allan Kaprow, Edmond Jabès, Dick Higgins, David Meltzer, George Herms, Howard Norman, Linda Montano, and Jackson Mac Low. Eleven regular issues were published between January 1977 and December 1982, at which time New Wilderness Letter merged with Wch Way. Rothenberg characterized the role of New Wilderness Letter with these words: “There is a primal book as there is a primal voice, & it is the task of our poetry & art to recover it—in our minds & in the world at large.”

New Wilderness Letter 5/6 (vol. 1, no. 5, September 1978).

New Wilderness Letter 5/6 (vol. 1, no. 5, September 1978).

New Wilderness Letter 10 (September 1981). “Special Dream Work-Work Issue”edited by Barbara Einzig. Cover photograph of Carolee Schneeman by Lisa Kahane.

New Wilderness Letter 10 (September 1981). “Special Dream-Work Issue” edited by Barbara Einzig. Cover photograph of Carolee Schneemann by Lisa Kahane.

New Wilderness Letter 11 (The Book, Spiritual Instrument) (1982). Cover image by Michael Gibbs.

New Wilderness Letter 11 (1982). “The Book, Spiritual Instrument,” edited by Jerome Rothenberg and David Guss. Cover image by Michael Gibbs.

Also issued

Jerome Rothenberg. A Poem in Yellow After Tristan Tzara. Metal felt-tipped pen. Ca. 1980.

Resource

Scans of the complete run of the New Wilderness Letter are available on the New Wilderness page at Jacket 2.


New Directions

Magazines & Presses

New Directions

James Laughlin
New York

1936–

David Antin, talking at the boundaries (1976).

david-antin-talking-at-the-boundaries


“No Jaz, it’s hopeless. You’re never going to make a writer.” “Jaz” was James Laughlin IV, a bored college freshman who had taken 1934–35 off to study with Ezra Pound at the poet’s “Ezuversity.” Pound counseled Laughlin, “Go back to Haavud to finish up your studies. If you’re a good boy your parents will give you some money and you can bring out books. I’ll write to my friends and get them to provide you with manuscripts.” Pound was right about the money, although Laughlin didn’t wait for the manuscripts to roll in. In 1936, with help from his father and his aunt, he founded New Directions. His first title, New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1936, featured a poem, short story, and essay by William Carlos Williams, whom Laughlin had first published as an editor of the Harvard Advocate. Williams’s White Mule followed in 1937. Pound’s Guide to Kulchur was published in 1938. It would be easy to dismiss Laughlin as a gentleman publisher (Pound invariably did, when frustrated by delays or mistakes), but consider this: New Directions has kept Williams and Pound in print for eighty years. And they are just two poets on a list that includes David Antin, Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Edwin Brock, Ernesto Cardenal, Hayden Carruth, Cid Corman, Gregory Corso, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Richard Eberhart, Russell Edson, William Everson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, García Lorca, Goethe, H.D., Robinson Jeffers, Bob Kaufman, Irving Layton, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, Eugenio Montale, Pablo Neruda, Charles Olson, George Oppen, Wilfred Owen, Nicanor Parra, Boris Pasternak, Kenneth Patchen, Octavio Paz, Raymond Queneau, John Crowe Ransom, Raja Rao, Pierre Reverdy, Kenneth Rexroth, Rilke, Rimbaud, Selden Rodman, Jerome Rothenberg, Delmore Schwartz, Stevie Smith, Gary Snyder, Nathaniel Thomas, and Yvor Winters—not to mention Buddha.

— Aaron Fischer, Fort Lee, New Jersey, October 1997

Jean Francois Bory. Once Again (1968).Translated by Lee Hildreth.

Jean-François Bory, Once Again (1968), translated by Lee Hildreth.

kenneth-patchen-doubleheader-poemscapes-and-a-letter-to-god-1958

Kenneth Patchen, Poemscapes / A Letter to God (1958).

New Directions books include

Antin, David. talking at the boundaries. 1976.

Bory, Jean-François, ed. Once Again. 1968. Translated by Lee Hildreth.

Corman, Cid. Livingdying. 1970. Cover by Shiryu Morita.

Corman, Cid. Sun Rock Man. 1970.

Corso, Gregory. Elegiac Feelings American. 1970. Cover photograph of the author by Ettore Sottass, Jr.

Corso, Gregory. The Happy Birthday of Death. 1960.

Corso, Gregory. Long Live Man. 1962.

Duncan, Robert. Bending the Bow. 1968. Book and dust jacket designed by Graham Mackintosh. Cover photograph of the author by Nata Piaskowski.

Duncan, Robert. The Opening of the Field. 1973.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. A Coney Island of the Mind. 1958.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. Her. 1960.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. The Secret Meaning of Things. 1968.

Kaufman, Bob. Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness. 1965.

Kerouac, Jack. Excerpt from Visions of Cody. 1959.

Levertov, Denise. The Cold Spring & Other Poems. 1968.

Levertov, Denise. The Collected Earlier Poems. 1979.

Levertov, Denise. Footprints. 1972. Cover photograph by Liebe Coolidge.

Levertov, Denise. The Freeing of the Dust. 1975. Cover photograph of work by Antoni Tàpies.

Levertov, Denise. Life in the Forest. 1978. Cover photograph by Harry Callahan.

Levertov, Denise. O Taste and See. 1964. Cover photograph by Roloff Beny.

Levertov, Denise. The Poet in the World. 1973. Cover photograph of the author’s desk by Suzy Gordon.

Levertov, Denise. The Sorrow Dance. 1966. Cover photograph by Roloff Beny.

Levertov, Denise. With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads. 1959.

McClure, Michael. September Blackberries. 1974.

Olson, Charles. Selected Writings. 1966. Edited and with an introduction by Robert Creeley.

Oppen, George. The Collected Poems of George Oppen. 1975.

Oppen, George. The Materials. 1962.

Oppen, George. Of Being Numerous. 1968.

Oppen, George. This in Which. 1965.

Patchen, Kenneth. Because It Is: Poems and Drawings. 1960.

Patchen, Kenneth. But Even So. 1968.

Patchen, Kenneth. Hallelujah Anyway. 1966.

Patchen, Kenneth. In Quest of Candlelighters. 1972.

Patchen, Kenneth. Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. 1958. Cover photograph of the author by Ray Johnson.

Patchen, Kenneth. Poemscapes / A Letter to God. 1958.

Patchen, Kenneth. Red Wine & Yellow Hair. 1949.

Patchen, Kenneth. Selected Poems. 1957. Cover photograph of the author by Harry Redl. Cover design by David Ford.

Patchen, Kenneth. Sleepers Awake. 1969. Published originally by Padell Books, 1946.

Randall, Margaret. Part of the Solution: Portrait of a Revolutionary. 1973.

Rexroth, Kenneth. The Collected Longer Poems. 1968.

Rexroth, Kenneth. The Collected Shorter Poems. 1966.

Rexroth, Kenneth. Natural Numbers: New and Selected Poems. 1963.

Rexroth, Kenneth, trans. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. 1965.

Reznikoff, Charles. By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse. 1962. Introduction by C. P. Snow.

Rothenberg, Jerome. Poland/1931. 1974.

Rothenberg, Jerome. Pre-Faces & Other Writings. 1981.


Newspaper

Magazines & Presses

newspaper

jack green
New York

Nos. 1–15 (1957–65).

newspaper 12 [1962].

newspaper_no-12_


newspaper was part conceptual art, part political tract, and part zine. Between 1957 and 1965, fifteen issues were written, edited, and distributed by “jack green,” reportedly the son of novelist Helen Grace Carlisle. A Princeton dropout, student of gambling systems and the theories of Wilhelm Reich, actuary of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and then a freelance proofreader, “green” used his underground tabloid for cultural commentary and deliciously satirical (yet superbly well-documented) assaults against institutionalized publishing and book reviewing in America. jack green was quite vocal (some might even say fanatical) in his appreciation of William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, taking out a full-page ad in the Village Voice in 1962 to extol the virtues of a book he considered to be “as much the novel of our generation as Ulysses was of its.” His master critique was “Fire the Bastards!,” which originally appeared in newspaper 12–14, wherein he dissected the overwhelmingly negative criticism dished out to The Recognitions. Fire the Bastards! was reprinted by Dalkey Archive Press in 1992.

newspaper 8 (ca 1959).

newspaper 8 [1959].