ABOUT THE PROJECT

An Author Index to Little Magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution

Scope

This project seeks to address this gap in scholarship by providing a much needed bibliographic and literary resource entitled “An Author Index to Little Magazines: The 1960s/70s ‘Mimeograph Revolution.’” This work will fully index 114 little magazine titles published between 1958 and 1980 and present researchers with a finding aid to approximately 37,000 works by over 500 individual writers and poets.

The focus of this reference work is a select, but important subgenre of little magazines—those originating during what has come to be called the “Mimeograph Revolution,” a name based on the popularity of producing magazines on a mimeograph machine beginning in the late 1950s. This era is significant in the history of twentieth century American literary magazines as it was a time when decreased costs of production resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of such magazines. Charles Brownson has estimated the number of little magazines in existence in 1956 at roughly 247; by 1980, approximately 700 were actively publishing. This increase of 453 during those two decades is almost twice the rate of growth for new titles as that of the entire period of 1900 to 1956 (Brownson, “Access to Little Magazines” RQ 22, no. 4 (Summer 1983): 375-387). The period is also noteworthy in that the “mimeos” differed from the reviews of earlier decades in their lack of cohesion around a particular school of writers and their opposition to the increasingly corporate nature of mainstream publishing in the late twentieth century.

A number of the authors who published extensively with this set of magazines have begun to make their way into academia as topics of scholarly research. These include Carol Bergé, Douglas Blazek, Charles Bukowski, Judson Crews, Larry Eigner, Theodore Enslin, Clayton Eshleman, Robert Kelly, Allan Kornblum, T.L. Kryss, d.a levy, Lyn Lifshin, Duane Locke, Gerald Locklin, Howard McCord, Clarence Major, Harold Norse, Gil Orlovitz, Kent Taylor, D.R. Wagner, Diane Wakoski, and William Wantling.

However, as James DenBoer has pointed out in A Bibliography of the Published Works of Douglas Blazek, 1961-2001, “The Mimeo Revolution in 60s and 70s poetry…still needs its scholars, explorers and explainers. There is bibliographical work to be done on the personalities of this period and their relationships. In a broader context, there are serious studies to be done on the impact of cheap printing and graphic technologies on the creation and spread of poetry….” (DenBoer, xxii) An Author Index to Little Magazines: The 1960s/70s ‘Mimeograph Revolution’ will serve as a portal for future researchers to begin to undertake the scholarship for which DenBoer calls.

The index will be an indispensable reference tool in any academic library. Little magazines have historically presented problems for collection development in academic libraries due to their erratic publication schedules and short life spans. However, Christine Rom has called little magazines “essential, contemporary cultural participants” and went on to state that libraries “that do not collect little magazines…are not fulfilling their intellectual responsibility.” (Rom, “Little Magazines: Do We Really Need Them?” Wilson Library Bulletin 56, no. 7 (March 1982): 516-519). Tom Montag, in his influential article, “Stalking the Little Magazine,” wrote, “Little magazines are essential to contemporary literature; the librarian who ignores them betrays that literature.” (Montag, “Stalking the Little Magazine” Serials Librarian 1, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 135-138).

The major holdings of little magazines are found at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Buffalo, Brown University and the New York Public Library. Other research libraries house little magazines to varying degrees of depth and completeness. Collections of little magazines are often housed in special collections settings, and thus, do not circulate to library patrons. Researchers outside of those major holding libraries can often experience frustration in how to access and locate works by individual writers.

For students and scholars of contemporary poetry, the index will serve as an excellent resource in locating and tracing the publication of individual works by authors and poets. The index would greatly serve the bibliographic needs of both undergraduate and graduate level research in the field. The significance of the index for researchers is that it will provide an extensive finding aid and heretofore unavailable method of access for a number of important little magazines.

Those interested in the history of the book arts and publishing will also find that this index contributes to the reference literature in those fields. A chapter on little magazines was included in Perspectives on American Book History by Scott Casper, Joanne Chaison and Jeffrey Groves (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002) and a recent issue of American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, & Bibliography was devoted to the Modernist Little Magazine.

Book dealer and collectors in the area of American literature would be a smaller, yet eager, audience. Little magazines of this era are increasingly of interest to collectors and the rise in values on the rare book market is evidence of this. In Part II of the Literary Periodicals sale catalog (#237) issued by the noted bookselling firm William Reese Company in 2004, Reese noted in the introduction that the response to Part I of the catalog “demonstrated that an enthusiastic constituency continues to exist for such material.”

Title List

Adventures in Poetry

Aldebaran Review

Atom Mind

Avalanche

Beatitude

Beginning, The

Black Cat Review

Black Sun

Blitz

Blue Beat

Blue Suede Shoes

Boink!

Bones

C; A Journal of Poetry

Camels Coming

Camels Hump

Censored Review

Center

Change

Clothesline

Coercion/Coercion Review

Cold Mountain

Congress

Copkiller

Desert Review

Desperado

Doones

Down Here

Dream Sheet

Drunken Boat

Duende

Dust

Earth

Eight Pager, The

Eikon

Elephant

Entrails

Eye on the Denver Scene

Floating Bear

For Now

Friendly Local Press

From a Window

Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts

Ghost Dance

Goodly Co.

Gooseberry

Grande Ronde Review

Grist

Hardware Poets Occasional

Harris Review

Hearse

Intrepid

J

Joglars

Kauri

La-Bas

Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns

Laughing Bear

Lines

Litmus

Little Mag

Love (Incorporating Hate)

Loveletter

Magazine (New York - Franks/Ellingham, eds.)

Magazine (New York – Congdon, ed.)

Marrahwanna Quarterly

Matter

Meatball

Mimeo

Moonstones

Mother (Pittsburgh)

Odda Tala

Ole

Open Skull

Or Oar Ore

Other, The

Out of Sight (San Francisco)

Outcast

Outsider

Penumbra

Poems Collected at Les Deux Magots/ Poets at Le Metro

Poetry Review (Tampa)

Presence

Quark

R.C. Lion

Remember Our Fire/Shameless Hussy Review

Rivoli Review

rongWrong

Roots Forming

Runcible Spoon

Sattvas Review

Second Coming

Silver Cesspool

Software

Sum (Albuquerque, NM; Buffalo, NY)

Sum (Sacramento, CA)

Targets

Theo

Toothpaste

Vagabond

Whe're

White Dove Review, The

Wild Dog

Willie, The

Wine Rings

Wordjock

Work

Wormwood Review, The

Yowl

Zahir

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