Winter 2005
New Series · Volume XXVII Number 1

Contents · Contributors · Selections · Editor's Notes & Cover Art

about the cover

Our cover design by Nanette Black features Incense Holders, Doryu Temple, Shikoku, Japan (2002), a photograph by Michael Kenna. Kenna, who grew up in England and now lives on the West Coast, is “a diurnal and nocturnal photographer, fascinated by times of day when light is at its most pliant.” More than twenty books and catalogs have been published on Kenna’s work, including Michael Kenna: A Twenty-Year Retrospective (Treville, 1994), Impossible to Forget (Nazraeli Press, 2001), and Japan (Nazraeli Press, 2004). Represented by dozens of galleries across the globe, his photographs are included in the permanent museum collections of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Patrimoine Photographique in Paris, and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, among others. In 2001, Kenna was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in France. His work can be viewed online at www.michaelkenna.com .

editor's notes

What does the future hold for literary magazines? This is a larger, more pressing question than it may seem at first blush, reaching beyond the fate of a particular journal. For it is closely entwined with the future of the literary arts in general. It resonates, for example, with recent studies that suggest a dramatic falling off in the number of people who read for pleasure. (Haven’t we all suspected this?—it’s just that the trend seems sharper, with so many distractions, so many diversions, so many demands on the little leisure time people once had. None but the direst of Cassandras prophesied.) In any event, the question has occupied me much of late, yielding a fair bit of stimulating conversation with friends and colleagues around the country. There are really two separate issues: in what forms will such magazines present themselves and, perhaps even more challenging, who will be their readers, their audiences? I will share some thoughts on the former here and save the latter for our next issue.

The physical and organizational issues are also rather more straightforward. Today, something like six hundred literary magazines are published in the U.S. In a long, noble tradition, many are published by hand out of garages, or at least out of the neighborhood Kinko’s. Their life spans may extend an issue or two, a year or two. Others are regional or national, dependent on institutional support or the largesse of individuals or endowments or their readers in general. An ongoing “churn” is inevitable and quite natural, with some great names disappearing, such as, in recent years, Grand Street, Ohio Review, and Antaeus. Occasionally they are resuscitated, as was The Kenyon Review after its slumber through the ’70s. Some venerable journals—take Virginia Quarterly Review—gain startling energy and fresh direction from a new editor. And others appear, with strength and considerable vigor. Tin House, Fence, and McSweeney’s come to mind.

It won’t surprise you that the most dramatic area of creative evolution in recent years has been electronic. Many, perhaps most, of the printed magazines now produce Web sites as well. Some are fairly static, offering little more than basic information about subscriptions and submissions. But quite a few of these Web sites are well stocked and increasingly interactive. They offer much that simply isn’t available in the print versions, from author interviews or oral/visual performances, to archival resources.

Of course, the Internet is now home to many exciting electronic publications (I’m not sure whether publication is an entirely appropriate sobriquet, but let it be) that have no print version. How many people have their Web browser open to Poetry Daily? I wonder but am certain the number is in the thousands. New Virginia Review, a fine magazine, went quietly asleep, replaced by Blackbird, a most interesting Web presence. Aside from the potential of a worldwide audience, electronic publishing offers many immediate benefits. No printers’ fees. No distributors to wrestle first for attention and then for payment. No bookstore managers pleading limited shelf space.

The single greatest obstacle, however, for all literary endeavors on the World Wide Web is the simple fact that most of us don’t enjoy reading literature on a computer screen. A short poem, perhaps. But lengthier essays or stories? Not yet.

And yet—I have not a single doubt that sometime, sometime fairly soon, that barrier too will disappear. A handheld screen of some sort will surely be developed that, for all but purists, will be as easily, comfortably, self-effacingly read as a book or magazine. Turning down a page corner may be a challenge, but not for long.

Will these new electronic journals, with their limitless space and creative potential, come to replace entirely our antediluvian page-bound versions? Not to my mind. At least no time soon. The six hundred may dwindle or migrate to the new medium. But that simply means expanding our definitions. The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, a venerable advocate, has expanded to include ever more members whose presence is solely on the Web.

No, the far greater challenge to literary magazines—and to literature—is that the audience may be as endangered as any spotted owl. Fewer people reading for pleasure is only part of the issue. I don’t believe, for example, that we have spent enough effort in learning about who our current audience is or how we’re going to keep it—you—reading. But is there a larger potential audience out there, readers in their hundreds of thousands or more who do still care, and passionately, about the written word and yet are being written off by commercial publishing? What might the noncommercial literary magazine offer them?

This will involve both self-reflection and reaching out. It will mean reevaluating our mission, whom and what we publish, and whom we publish for. In KR’s next issue I will tackle these questions as best I can—and probably pose some more.

~David H. Lynn