Extensions

Suzanne Zavrian and Joachim Neugroschel
New York

Nos. 1–8 (1968–74). 5/6 is a double issue.

Extensions 1 (1968).

I suppose when I think of people starting a literary magazine I think of it with a certain solemnity, such as for the exposition of a certain literary theory, or to give audience to a certain philosophy, or for other more esoteric reasons. Extensions started a bit differently.

It was the late sixties. Joachim Neugroschel (who, alas, died in 2011) was a noted translator; I was the managing editor of Pocket Books. We were sitting around one day talking when one of us, and I have no idea who, said, “Want to start a literary magazine?” and the other replied, “Sure.” And that was the philosophical ground from which Extensions was born.

Extensions 7 (1971). Cover image by Arakawa.

Totally different as people, we worked pretty well as a team. The ground rule that was laid down was that no work was accepted unless we both agreed. That worked out well since at the extreme of Joachim’s taste were things that were superficial and coy; at the extreme of mine, work that was conventional and banal. So all that was blocked. The real principles were that work should be adventurous and that we wanted to mix up all mediums: using musical scores as illustrative material; showing the metamorphosis of a symbol over time as a visual essay—basically, giving a venue to the experimental. The name we gave it was from Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Although looking back, I think maybe the primary aim was for us to be able to read more work by writers we liked.

The division of work was perfect—Joachim loved going to readings, parties, events, so he met many new writers that way who he could solicit work from. I preferred to stay home and read, so i wrote people I came across whose work I liked and asked for work for the magazine. Since Joachim was a trilingual translator, he found all kinds of European work that had never been published in English that he could translate for us. Like a small catalogue for a Dubuffet exhibition that Dubuffet gave us to publish, along with photos of sculpture that we used for our front and back covers.

Extensions 8 (1974). Cover image by Aloísio Magalhães.

We paid for the magazine out of our pockets and through subscriptions and the occasional grant. And I corralled a couple of talented designers from Pocket Books to design and lay out the magazine. We used the Print Center for printing—since it was set up for that purpose, it was a cheap way to do it. In the beginning we took it around to Manhattan bookstores and left copies on consignment. Then later we got a distributor through my connections at Pocket Books. Strange as it seems, my connections through a big mass-market publisher were useful in various ways to a small experimental magazine!

I don’t think we ever talked about ending it, I think we just drifted out of it the same way we drifted in. It went along and then it stopped. We were proud of it, though.

— Suzanne Ostro (Zavrian), New York City, January 2017

Contributors (complete)

Vito Acconci
Lawrence Alloway
Jack Anderson
Roger Aplon
Allan Appel
Arakawa
H. C. Artmann
John Ashbery
Corrado Augias
Georges Badin
Carol Bankerd
Mary Beach
Max Bense
André Breton
Besmilr Brigham
Rebecca Brown
Paul Celan
René Char
Robert Chatain
Jean Chatard
Andrei Codrescu
Marvin Cohen
Robert Cohen
James Conley
Clark Coolidge
Stanley Cooperman
Jean Daive
Gail Deeb
Diane di Prima
André du Bouchet
Jean Dubuffet
Lane Dunlop
Denis Dunn
Jean-Pierre Duprey
Claude Esteban
Curtis Faville
Mary Ferrari
Peter Paul Fersch
Charles Henri Ford
Isabel Fraire
Dick Gallup
Charley George
Jochen Gerz
Madeline Gins
Dan Graham
Paul Grillo
Ron Gross
Annette Hayn
Piero Heliczer
Michael Heller
Peter Henisch
Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Ron Horning
Yuaka Ishii
Fayad Jamís
Allan Kaplan
Steve Katz
Robert Kern
Richard Kostelanetz
Karl Krolow
Reiner Kunze
Aloísio Magalhães
Gerard Malanga
Edward Marcotte
Donald McCaig
Tom McKeown
W. S. Merwin
Jerred Metz
Ursule Molinaro
Catherine Murray
Joachim Neugroschel
Seiichi Niikuni
Michael O’Brien
Sarah Plimpton
Raphael Oliva
Ron Padgett
Miodrag Pavlovich
Claude Pélieu
Tony Perniciaro
John Perreault
Carter Ratcliff
Albert René Ricard
Pierre Reverdy
Allan Rosen
Juliette Rossan
Nelly Sachs
James Sallis
Erling Salomsen
Peter Schjeldahl
George Schneeman
Hugh Seidman
David Shapiro
Michael Silverton
Michael Smith
Stephen Stepanchev
Robert Sward
Jaime García Terrés
Paul Thiel
Tony Towle
Georg Trakl
M. Trap
Paul Violi
Joseph Vojacek
Roy Walford
Hannah Weiner
Nathan Whiting
Oswald Wiener
Emmett Williams
Pete Winslow
Derk Wynand
Suzanne Zavrian

Resource

Scans of the complete run of Extensions can be found on the Eclipse website.