While ever-changing and always current with the times, the literary magazines more often called little magazines or litmags among my generation of writers and activists, have enjoyed a long and important history. On September 1st, I wrote about the sense of community found in these nontraditional presses by writers who were political or were in other ways outliers or outsiders during the mid-20th century. I hope below to fill in more about the origins and history of the little magazines.

In an article published on July 26, 2017, Michael Barsanti wrote that “‘Little magazines’ is a term referring to a set of literary periodicals published between roughly 1912 and 1939 that are characterized by their small readership, financial fragility, and artistic innovation [and which] provided a place where writers of new, unusual, and often iconoclastic work could get into print.”

Barsanti is mistaken about the timeline in which he places little magazines , which were being published long before 1912. Arguably, the first litmag, established in 1864 by Pierre Bayle in France, was “Nouvelles de la république des lettres.” As mainstream literary magazines became common by the early part of the 19th century, so too did litmags as outliers and remedy for the university-based or academic literary publications. (Wikipedia)

These litmags also continued to be published and distributed after 1939. Then in mid-century a revolution occurred. In 1887, the A. B. Dick Company had released the first Edison Mimeograph duplicator. 3 By the last half of the 20th century, used Mimeograph machines and similar spirit-duplicators such as Gestetner and Ditto machines were readily and inexpensively available. The low cost to operate these printers made them ideal for small publishers.

In 1956, two months before the City Lights first edition, Allen Ginsberg self-published 25 copies of his poem “Howl” on the Mimeograph machine at San Francisco State College. He sent copies to T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Lionel Trilling, William Faulkner, William Carlos Williams (who wrote the City Lights edition’s introduction), and others. The embryo litmag soon became the outlier medium of choice, published and edited by poets, hand-collated and stapled together.

From Mimeograph and Gestetner machines flowed litmags bearing the poetry and commentary of my generation. While some of these little magazines were mainstream, many were underground carriers of protest and counterculture ideals. This was the milieu in which my poetry and that of many others was germinated and grew. The Sixties and Seventies were a time redolent of lingering McCarthyism, the illegal American invasion of Vietnam and Cambodia, and other political and social issues we believed must be addressed. We were street warriors writing for the people and we found a home for our work in the litmags.

Poet and scholar Frank Davey wrote that, “Historically, little magazines have sprung up whenever new, animated, and serious writing cannot find a market. Thus these magazines are usually managed and edited by writers–writers who are anything but reluctant to publish their own works. The annoyance that gets such writers into the magazine business is, of course, that in any period both the commercial outlets –whether ‘literary’ mags or publishing houses–and the glossy-paged scholarly quarterlies cater chiefly to established writers. A new group or school of writers cannot possibly get a sufficient quantity of its work published to make its presence felt.”

My poetry, stories, and articles appeared in litmags published across Canada, The United States, and Mexico as well as some in countries around the world. Through copies mailed to me, I discovered many fine writers published in the same mags as me, and I found listings of even more litmags where I could submit.

The mimeo litmag has now all but vanished. It hasn’t died but morphed into new and exciting forms. With the advent of digital technology and the World Wide Web came the zine, a new and inexpensive form of personal publishing, created digitally, printed direct from the computer, stapled and mailed. Among the wide variety of zine content, the spirit of the litmag lived on. By now, the zine has all but disappeared, but the litmag is embodied in the online literary magazine, published and edited by poets and artists. The form may have changed, but the spirit lives on.

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie, is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide. In Canada, this book is also available at Chapters/Indigo for pickup at the door or sent to your address. Get your copy now.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.