Genres
From the Editor's Introduction—
In November 2022, Chicago Review put out a call for essays, interviews, and other writing on “small press poetry in the United States—its past, present, and probable future, as well as the writers, editors, communities, and institutions that make it run.” The stipulation to focus the issue on the US was intended to offer parameters to a prompt where possible responses were otherwise boundless; however, we also wanted to invite contributors to think about the importance of small presses for today’s poetry writ large, from somewhat communal and potentially transnational perspectives. We hoped to compile a collective (though not uncontradictory) idea of what one might mean by “small press poetry in the United States.”
Here, however, you will find no comprehensive account of what small press poetry is, was, or will be—and certainly no complete picture of the writers, publishers, and networks that make it run. Instead, we have assembled a Flood of histories, impenetrable and personal Jargons, and Lost Roads that connect only in remote places.
Special Feature: Small Press Poetry in the United States—
Adam Fales, Editor’ s Introduction: On Small Communities
Hilary Plum & Matvei Yankelevich, Small Press Economies: A Dialogue
Steven Maye, The Book and the Press in Recent North American Poetry
Kaja Marczewska, The Small Press at the Library
Nick Sturm, “Chicago comes to be its own source ”: Little Magazines and Chicago’ s New York School Print Culture
Peter O’Leary, Flood Editions: An Interview with Devin Johnston and Michael O’ Leary
Darcie Dennigan, The Great Wastepaper Theatre Anthology of Providence, Rhode Island
Stephanie Anderson, An Interview with Patricia Spears Jones
Stephanie Anderson, An Interview with Renee Tajima-Peña
Jocelyn Saidenberg & Stephanie Young, Krupskaya Books: Some Notes on Collective Practice
Kate Robinson, Life Fabric: Bay Area Poet-Publishers, 2010–2023
Catherine Kelly, The Women’ s Press Collective, 1969–1977
Eliza Browning, The Revolutionary Legacy of City Lights’ s Literary Gathering Place
Patricia Keats, Irving Rosenthal and the Free Print Shop in San Francisco
Andy Martrich, In Jargon’ s Penumbra: An Interview with F. Whitney Jones, President of the Jargon Society
Shannon Tharp, “You do want it to mean something to someone else ”: besmilr brigham’ s Run Through Rock
Katie Marya, Impression Techniques: Spending Time with the Two Women Behind La Impresora in Puerto Rico
Cary Stough, An Interview with Black Ocean’ s Janaka Stucky and Carrie Olivia Adams
Fiction—
Sophie Kemp, Luckiest Girl in the World
Clemens Setz, trans. Lizzy Kinch, Suzy
Anne Élaine Cliche, trans. Emma Roy, from Who Shall I Say?
Interview—
Joshua Weiner & Donna Stonecipher, An Exchange, March 28, 2021–March 5, 2022
Nonfiction—
Will Alexander, Incendiary Looping: Uranian Theatricality
Keith Tuma, from Studies in the Unnatural World
Poetry—
Alice Notley, from The Elements
César Dávila Andrade, trans. Jonathan Simkins, Urban Guide, Porifera & Consummate Human
Jay Gao, The Household of Chinese Water Deer & The Madness of Invasive Species
Will Alexander, from Charismatic Spiral
Ronald Johnson, The Imaginary Menagerie
Peter O’Leary, A Note on the Manuscript
Devin King & Peter O’ Leary, Ronald Johnson, “The Imaginary Menagerie ”: An Afterword
Michael Becker, from In Search of Pretty Flowers
Mia You, On the Maas, Rose of Jericho & Openzetten
Joe Luna, Good & Evil
Roberto Harrison, Humility and Humiliation, Or; In the Colors of Conversations, We Know Silence; I Begin Men of Maize with a Shadow & End Mark for Recursion
Lauren Russell, The Doubting Disease: Moral Scrupulosity: OCD
Art—
Michael Becker, A Pretty Flower
Roberto Harrison, crumbs for a letter & a sign for return
Reviews—
Lukas Moe on Andrea Brady, Poetry and Bondage
Léon Pradeau on Stéphane Bouquet, Common Life
Alex Streim on Fernanda Melchor, Paradais
Eliza Browning on Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool & Lee Konstantinou, The Last Samurai Reread
Katherine Franco on Barbara Guest and Stephen Ratcliffe, Letters