Category Archives: Literature

Wig Wag

Posted by Periodicals/Reference Librarian

Wig Wag
Summer 1988 – December 1989; June 1990 – February 1991

In an archive almost everything carries the aroma of obituary. A book’s cover resembles a mausoleum door, newspapers evoke autumn leaves, a magazine’s tint becomes a mortician’s makeup. Bylines are empty chairs. In our digital realm, which seems so lively, everything passes before we’ve finished, is made to fade into the next, which is why it all gets saved.

Wig Wag is not online. The magazine lived for three years between the minor New Yorker exodus that staffed it and the first Iraq war’s recession that killed it. Founding editor Alexander Kaplen aimed gently at “A Picture of American Life,” a little literary and not too heartlandish. Wig Wag‘s “Letters From Home” could be set against The New Yorker‘s “Talk of the Town.” Terry McMillan, William Maxwell, Peter Matthiessen, Norman Rush, Sven Birkerts, Sousa Jamba, Luc Sante you’ve maybe heard of; many more you certainly haven’t. But the effort to turn from city-centrism seems more significant for its failure.

A notable tool in Wig Wag‘s kit was their “Indignites: Our monthly listing of who’s beating up on whom.” Critical briefs that don’t always read as anachronistic as we might like.

Wig wag, it was pointed out to us by poet and SVA professor Ray DiPalma, is that thing you do with flags on a runway when you’re trying to keep airplanes from crashing.

indignity

February 1991

December 1990

November 1990

November 1990

October 1990

October 1990

June 1990

November 1989

September 1990

August 1990

December 1989

Summer 1988

Posted in America, Literature, Periodicals

American Illustrated Magazine

Nov 10

Posted by Periodicals/Reference Librarian

American Illustrated Magazine
November 1905-October 1906 (Volumes 61-62)

American Illustrated Magazine does not explain itself. It gets right on with the story. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, on soft, aromatic paper. Pleasantly antiquated. And illustrated of course, with photographs, like a series of bird portraits or a crocodile hunt, or with drawings that step out in front of what they were meant to describe. As if they told their own story all along.

Walter Glackens, April 1906

Arthur G. Dove, Feb. 1906

F.R. Gruger, Nov. 1905

Arthur G. Dove, Nov. 1905

Henry S. Watson, Jan. 1906

Franklin Booth, March 1906

H.E. Townsend, Jan. 1906

George Kerr, April 1906

H.E. Townsend, Jan. 1906

Philip R. Goodwin, April 1906

Philip R. Goodwin, April 1906

Karl Anderson, Jan. 1906

C.D. Williams, Dec. 1905

Rose Cecil O’Neill, Dec. 1905

Henry Heyer, Nov. 1905

Arthur G. Dove, Nov. 1905

Lynn Bogue Hunt, Feb. 1906

J.M. Conde, Feb. 1906

F.R. Gruger, Nov. 1905

Charles Sarka, Feb. 1906

Posted in Literature, Periodicals

The Sienese Shredder

Sep 8

Posted by Periodicals/Reference Librarian

The Sienese Shredder
nos 1-4; 2006-2010
www.sienese-shredder.com

The Sienese Shredder #1 has a mango cover with a fox and a clock. Inside, right off the bat, is History and Truth (a commencement address), followed by Gérard de Nerval’s Chantilly (“filled with very old retired servants, walking their limping dogs”), postcard collages by John Ashbery, music by Alan Shockley, the marketing of surrealism, Ron Padgett, Harry Mathews, A Parliament of Refrigerator Magnets, delirious episodes in contemporary art, a poem played out through a lyrical Twister, a Duchampian chess challenge bearing a cupid, Honey’s Metaphoric Energy Transfer, The New Crustacean, and more, ending after over 200 pages with J-K Huysmans, of Against Nature, in Haarlem.

Flip through the next three and find currency collages, mute critics, bughouse poets, Whitman’s glasses, Toilet Rolls, Macintoshages, octopussarian impulses, de Kooning’s last drawing, epitaphs by William Beckford, eyeballs, giant-size mini books, spools by Crumb, and Jesus Christ. These aren’t even the highlights.

Founded and edited by Brice Brown and Trevor Winkfield, The Shredder ran for four issues, 2006-2010. Each issue contained an audio CD. “Contents can include writings by visual artists; art by writers; poets as installation artists; photographers as poets, and the range of contributors moves from the well-known and up-and-coming to the unknown or forgotten,” says the website (which has excerpts and issues for sale).

The complete series is available in our Periodicals archive.