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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2020
This essay explores the formative but largely unacknowledged role played by women in shaping the material and intellectual cultural productions of the mimeograph revolution in mid-century New York City. I argue that women poets used their positions as editors of little magazines to claim space – material, textual, cultural, and metaphorical – in literary and social networks in which they faced gendered marginalization. I suggest that the varied success with which they were able to do so reveals the complexities of editing, the uneven nature of the influences of gender, the determining role of domestic spaces, and the significance of affective labor in relation to the mimeograph revolution.
1 Jerome Rothenberg, preface to Clay, Steven and Phillips, Rodney, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960–1980 (New York: New York Public Library and Granary Books, 1998), 9–11, 11Google Scholar.
2 Mottram, Eric, “The Mimeograph Revolution,” Times Literary Supplement, 3258 (6 Aug. 1964), 714Google Scholar, attributed the coining of this term to Kirby Congdon, who ran Crank Press. This essay focusses on the mimeograph revolution in its New York City context. The Lower East Side was one of two key American centres for literary self-publishing during the period (the other was the San Francisco Bay Area). However, there was also a global turn toward self-publishing and small-press publishing in the postwar decades, with writers from numerous countries increasingly engaging in counterpoetics and doubling as publishers. This happened for various reasons, including a global rise in and connectivity between movements protesting the elitism of cultural establishments, as well as racism, colonialism, war, and discrimination on the grounds of gender and sexuality. The University of Arizona's Special Collections gives a good indication of how widespread the mimeograph revolution was: it holds single issues and partial and complete runs of approximately 615 little magazines, the majority of which are devoted to poetry and the arts, published between 1965 and 1976. Most of the periodicals are published in the United States; other countries represented are Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, Kenya, Australia, India, Norway, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Canada. Mimeographing rather than offsetting offered users around the world a greater degree of control as to the content, timing, and dissemination of periodicals, making it particularly appealing to groups for whom literary and/or political power was restricted.
3 Prima, Diane Di, Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (New York: Viking, 2001), 254Google Scholar. See Harter, Christopher, An Author Index to Little Magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution (Landam, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Anderson, Elliott and Kinzie, Mary, eds., The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History (Wainscott, NY: Pushcart, 1978)Google Scholar; Clay, Steven and Phillips, Rodney, eds., A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960–1980 (New York: The New York Public Library and Granary Books, 1998)Google Scholar; Morris, Ian and Diaz, Joanne, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kane, Daniel, All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kane, , Do You Have A Band? Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sullivan, James Donal, On the Walls and in the Streets: American Poetry Broadsides from the 1960s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997)Google Scholar; http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com. See also Duncombe, Stephen, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (London: Verso, 1997)Google Scholar; and Radway, Janice, “Zines, Half-Lives, and Afterlives: On the Temporalities of Social and Political Change,” PMLA, 126, 1 (Jan. 2011), 140–50Google Scholar.
4 Philpotts, Matthew, “The Role of the Periodical Editor: Literary Journals and Editorial Habitus,” Modern Language Review, 107, 1 (Jan. 2012), 39–64, 41Google Scholar.
5 Radway, 148.
6 In conversation with the author, poet Ron Padgett recalls that when he was in high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma during the late 1950s, copies of Yugen, edited by Hettie and LeRoi Jones, were available at a local bookstore, and that it was Yugen that inspired him to set up his own magazine, the White Dove Review.
7 Marek, Jayne E., Women Editing Modernism: “Little” Magazines & Literary History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 193Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., 3.
9 Manushag N. Powell, “Afterword: We Other Periodicalists, or, Why Periodical Studies?”, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 30, 2, Women in Anglo-American Periodicals (Fall 2011), 441–50, 448.
10 de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Randall, Steven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 117Google Scholar.
11 Low, Setha M. and Lawrence-Zuniga, Denise, “Locating Culture,” in Low, Setha M. and Lawrence-Zuniga, Denise, eds., The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 1–47, 2Google Scholar.
12 Felski, Rita, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Marek, 194.
14 Ibid., 2.
15 Beins, Agatha, Liberation in Print: Feminist Periodicals and Social Movement Identity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017), 46Google Scholar.
16 Brodhead, Richard, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 5–8Google Scholar.
17 Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, 25–26 (1990), 56–80, 67Google Scholar.
18 Hamilton, Roxanne Power, “‘Take Everyone to Heaven with Us’: Anne Waldman's Poetry Cultures,” in Bloch, Avital H. and Umansky, Laura, eds., Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 98–125, 102–3Google Scholar. Mimeograph machines were used by the Resistance during World War II to produce underground pamphlets. In the 1960s, they were increasingly used to mobilize the New Left: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), for example, used mimeo to circulate 20,000 copies of the Port Huron Statement (1962), greatly raising the profile of student activism. Feminist periodicals boomed at mid-century, with nearly 600 new publications appearing between 1968 and 1973. Queer activists, particularly after Stonewall, also used DIY publishing to create an extensive network of activist, general-interest, and literary queer publications, including Mattachine Review, New York Hymnal, and Transvestia. Publishers including City Lights and Broadside regularly published antiwar and antiracism pamphlets and flyers. Mimeo was also used to promote events, from poetry readings to rock concerts to happenings.
19 Low, Setha M., “Embodied Space(s): Anthropological Theories of Body, Space, and Culture,” Space and Culture, 6, 1 (Feb. 2003), 9–18, 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Baraka, Amiri, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1997; first published 1984), 251Google Scholar.
20 Hamilton, 111.
21 Di Prima, Diane, Revolutionary Letters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968)Google Scholar.
22 Fraser, 67.
23 Hamilton, 109.
24 Kane, All Poets Welcome, 22.
25 In the 1983 Dictionary of Literary Biography volume on the Beats, Hettie Jones, the author by then of a dozen books for children, would appear once again as “his white wife, Hettie Cohen.” Jones, Hettie, How I Became Hettie Jones (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 234, 220, 226Google Scholar. See also Romano, Renee Christine, Race Mixing: Black–White Marriage in Postwar America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 224Google Scholar; James Campbell, “Revolution Song,” The Guardian, 4 Aug. 2007, at www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview12; Jean-Philippe Marcoux, “Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones),” Oxford Bibliographies, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199827251-0187, at www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0187.xml. In the context of Baraka's involvement with black nationalism, Hettie's identity as a white woman is understandably emphasized, but it jars with her subsequent career as a writer on her own terms (and her ambitions to be one before that).
26 Letter from Lewis Warsh to Anne Waldman, 10 Jan. 1970, Anne Waldman Papers, Box 20, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Research Center).
27 Ted Berrigan interviewed by Waldman, Anne and Cohn, Jim, in Talking in Tranquillity: Interviews with Ted Berrigan, ed. Ratcliffe, Stephen and Scalapino, Leslie (Bolinas and Oakland, CA; Avenue B/O Books, 1991), 128Google Scholar.
28 Johnson, Joyce, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir (York: Methuen, 2012; first published 1983), xvi, 90Google Scholar.
29 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, “Manifests,” Diacritics, 26, 3–4 (1996), 31–53, 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is, of course, a bigger frame for this – women experienced similar dynamics in other circles, civil rights groups, the antiwar movement, and the New Left, even as these groups fought for the rights and possibilities of disenfranchised people. Audre Lorde, for instance, writes in “Learning from the 60s,” that “Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power movement was prone.” Lorde, Audre, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (New York: Crossing Press, 2007), 137Google Scholar. There is a telling passage in Kerouac's Dharma Bums (1958) in which a woman who wants to be a bodhisattva takes part in an Americanized version of a Tibetan “yab-yum” ritual with the novel's protagonist, with whom she has fallen in love; both naked, she sits on his lap, facing him, supposedly symbolizing the union of compassion and wisdom. But as Blair Hurley ponders, this scene raises troubling questions: “Did she come to the ceremony expecting to be seen as a bodhisattva, a Buddha in training, a seeker on the path? Or did she know before she ever stepped in that living room among those laughing men that she would be seen as a temple woman, a dark void for men to fill with their desires and needs?” Blair Hurley, “The Dharma Girls,” Paris Review, 17 Aug. 2018, at www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/17/the-dharma-girls.
30 Warsh, Lewis, Introduction to The Angel Hair Anthology (New York: Granary Books, 2001), xix–xxvii, xxviGoogle Scholar.
31 There were exceptions: Frank O'Hara and Joe Brainard worked to realize a creative environment in which women were present and pivotal as fellow artists, collaborators, friends, and artistic predecessors. Allen Ginsberg reputedly called Anne Waldman his “spiritual wife” – an ambiguous term that she may or may not have appreciated.
32 Warsh, Introduction to The Angel Hair Anthology, xix.
33 Di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, 107, 237.
34 Jones, 85.
35 Berrigan, Talking in Tranquillity, 128.
36 Alice Notley in conversation with Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Temple University, 20 Feb. 2001, at http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Notley.php.
37 Sorrentino, Gilbert, “Prose of Our Time,” Floating Bear, 30 (1964), 377–79, 378Google Scholar.
38 Albert Ellis, “Introduction,” Femora 2 (1964), n.p. This brings to mind the Stieglitz circle's inclusion of Georgia O'Keeffe in its avant-garde formation, but only on highly gendered, male-dictated terms that emphasized her body and sensuality above all else.
39 Anne Waldman, Introduction to The Angel Hair Anthology, xx.
40 Shamma, Yasmine, Spatial Poetics: Second Generation New York School Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Morgan, Robin, introduction to Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement (New York: Random House, 1970), xiii–xviiiGoogle Scholar. Harker, Jaime and Farr, Cecilia Konchar, eds., This Book Is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 1Google Scholar.
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46 Parker, Sarah, “‘It's Just a Matter of Form’: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Experiments with Masculinity,” Humanities, 8, 4 (2019), 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar (MDPI journals use article numbers not page numbers).
47 Ibid., original emphasis.
48 Olivia Wright, review of Beins, Liberation in Print, Journal of American Studies, 53 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875819000781.
49 Glavey, Brian, “The Friendly Way: Crafting Community in Joe Brainard's Poetry,” in Shamma, Yasmine, ed., Joe Brainard's Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 127–45, 131Google Scholar.
50 Edmund Berrigan, “Visiting Naropa in the Summer of 1992”, at www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/03/visiting-naropa-in-the-summer-of-1992.
51 Marek, Women Editing Modernism, 194.
52 Alice Notley in conversation with Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Temple University, 20 Feb. 2001, at https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Notley/Notley-Alice_Discussion-DuPlessis_Temple_PA_2-20-2001.mp3.
53 Letter from Ted Berrigan (1968), Angel Hair Archive, MSS 004, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 15, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
54 Letter from Ron Padgett, he Angel Hair Archive, MSS 004, Series 1, Box 4, Folder 18.
55 Letter from Anne Waldman, 20 April 1970, Ron Padgett Papers, Box 1, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
56 Letter from Ron Padgett, 25 April 1970, Anne Waldman Papers, Box 2.
57 Ted Berrigan, blurb for Waldman, Anne, Baby Breakdown (New York and Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), dustjacketGoogle Scholar.
58 Richardson, Miles, “Being-in-the-Market versus Being-in-the-Plaza: Material Culture and the Construction of Social Reality in Spanish America,” American Ethnologist, 9, 2 (May 1982), 421–36, 434CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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60 Powell, “Afterword,” 441.
61 Jones, Hettie and Anderson, Stephanie, “An Interview with Hettie Jones,” Chicago Review, 59, 1–2 (Fall 2014–Winter 2015), 79–90, 81Google Scholar.
62 Ibid., 85.
63 Owen, Maureen and Anderson, Stephanie, “An Interview with Maureen Owen,” Chicago Review, 59, 1–2 (Fall 2014–Winter 2015), 105–112, 106Google Scholar.
64 Ibid., 106–7.
65 Di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, 184.
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68 Young, Iris Marion, “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme,” in Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 123–54, 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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70 Waldman, Introduction to The Angel Hair Anthology, xxii.
71 Berrigan, Ted, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan, ed. Notley, Alice, Berrigan, Anselm, and Berrigan, Edmund (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 167–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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73 Haraway, Donna, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149–82, 170–73Google Scholar.
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83 Hardt, Michael, “Affective Labor,” boundary 2, 26, 2 (1999), 89–90Google Scholar; Oksala, Johanna, “Affective Labor and Feminist Politics,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 41, 2 (2016), 281–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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85 Hamilton, “Take Everyone to Heaven with Us,” 121.
86 Johnson, Minor Characters, xvi. See also Kane, Daniel, “‘Nor Did I Socialise with Their People’: Patti Smith, Rock Heroics and the Poetics of Sociability,” Popular Music, 31, 1 (2012), 105–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
87 Letter from Patti Smith to Anne Waldman, Angel Hair Archive, MSS 004, Series 1, Box 5, Folder 13.
88 Letter from Smith to Waldman (undated), Anne Waldman Papers, Box 19.
89 Powell, “Afterword,” 443.
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95 Ibid., 136.
96 Di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, 107.
97 Waldman, Introduction to The Angel Hair Anthology, xxiii.
98 Owen and Anderson, “An Interview with Maureen Owen,” 108.
99 Jones and Anderson, “An Interview with Hettie Jones,” 79–80.
100 Ibid., 84.
101 Felski, The Gender of Modernity, 2.
102 Owen and Anderson, 109.
103 Jones and Anderson, 84.
104 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 149.
105 Johnson, Minor Characters, 262.
106 Jones, 180.
107 Jones and Anderson, 84.
108 Jones, 168.
109 Audre Lorde, “An Interview with Karla Hammond,” American Poetry Review, March–April 1980, 18–20, 19.
110 Kate Dossett, Feminist Archives, Feminist Futures, at www.feminist-archives.leeds.ac.uk.
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113 Ibid., 86.
114 Richardson, “Being-in-the-Market versus Being-in-the-Plaza,” 422.
115 Jones and Anderson, 81.
116 Owen and Anderson, “An Interview with Maureen Owen,” 109.
117 Stephanie Anderson, “An Interview with Bernadette Mayer,” at http://coldfrontmag.com/an-interview-with-bernadette-mayer-by-stephanie-anderson-part-1.
118 Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 44, 51.
119 Johnson, Minor Characters, 32.
