Jessica
I have a friend who is a book lover. Since he is a bit older than me, his book collection is much more varied. While I have never been to his house, I imagine that he has books crammed in every nook and cranny. Every so often, he weeds through his book collection and gives me things that I may find interesting. He knows that I am a poet and all-around English nerd, so his gifts tend to be old poetry collections or theory books.
When I saw my friend on Sunday, I hit the jackpot. He gave me a series of old theory books and journals from the ’70′s and ’80′s. They are, in chronological order:
- Extensions 7 – 1971
- Extensions 8 – 1974
- Sub Stance – 1974
- An Olson-Melville Sourcebook Volume II: The Mediterranean Eurasia
- The Modularist Review – 1975
- Chelsea 37 – 1978
- Poetry Information Basil Bunting Special Issue – 1978
- Poetics Today Special Issue Narratology I: Poetics of Fiction – 1980
- The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book -1984
The cool thing about these old journals is that I can read through some of the tables of contents and find a famous poet. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (an anthology, really) is the biggest jackpot, with contributions from Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, Rae Armantrout, and others. But some of the smaller journals have less obvious gems. Extensions 7 has contributions from Paul Celan and Andrei Codrescu, The Moduralist Review has a piece by Kenneth Rexroth, and Sub Stance has something by Antonin Artaud.
What I like about all of these is that they represent a specific space and time. Some of them are well made and some of them are mimeographed and saddle stapled. These saddle stapled ones feel handmade and for me, they represent a time when you would grab a group of friends and crank out a journal, just because you like poetry a whole lot. I can just imagine the editors sitting in someone’s living room, hand editing a poem and retyping it on their typewriters. I just about passed out from delight when I received this bounty.
My plan is to delve through these new finds and figure out which ones I would like to keep and read. For the ones that aren’t keepers, I may use them as fodder for some poetry cut-ups in my art journals. They will be repurposed into something new, but still handmade. I’ve received quite the inheritance.
