life of lyn lifshin

A curious case. The compulsion to publish so much; everything seemingly. Long ago, as an editor of a litmag, facing the onslaught of those submissions...the overstuffed envelopes would show up even as one had just rejected the last batch. There were some gems therein. But it was also absurd: Was there some warehouse, full of long tables and typewriters, where low-paid workers typed poems in the style of Lyn Lifshin? The sheaves gathered every 30 minutes, wheeled on a cart into the folding department, then on to the envelope lickers, tongues hanging out, in the sealing department. A mail bag full of envelopes left on the loading dock, addressed to dozens of far-flung little magazines.

In another era would she have made her fame as one of the Instapoets?

last vestige

He thought he was being published; in fact, the little magazine was neutralizing the poem, rendering it harmless and making it virtually unseen.

listen up, people

Another online litmag with one of those masthead manifestos written by an editor too young to understand how much his exhortations sound like echoes.

inadvertent advert

So often listed in poets' bios, more poets knew the name of the literary magazine than ever read the magazine itself.

blasted into little pieces

Prior to The Great War (WWI), Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis put out their Vorticist magazine aggressively called BLAST. After the war they were publishing in The Little Review. The titles of the two publications are telling: Nothing like the reality of trench warfare to put one’s art into perspective.

third world dictator

The poet paraded around proud as a third world dictator, his latest little magazine publications splayed like gaudy epaulets on his shoulders.