Wormwood Review. Marvin Malone. The Why and Wherefore of Wormwood

Transcription

1 Source: The Why and Wherefore of Wormwood. In Diane Kruchkow and Curt Johnson, eds. Green Isle in the Sea. An Informal History of the Alternative Press, Highland Park, IL: December Press, Wormwood Review Marvin Malone The Wormwood Review goes on and on and on... and continues to exert an influence beyond that expected of a little magazine printing only 700 handnumbered copies. In addition to being the editor of Wormwood, Marvin Malone is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology, a serious collector of little magazines, and a part-time artist/poet. Born in Nebraska in 1930 and married there in 1952, he lived in New Jersey, New Mexico, and Connecticut before settling in Stockton, California. There he teaches at the University of the Pacific School of Pharmacy. The curious can pick up other life details from: California Librarian (34/4: , 1970), TriQuarterly (43: , 1978) and the current edition of American Men and Women o f Science: Medical Sciences. The bearded, balding professor s opinions on God, politics, sex and loss of innocence can be inferred from his commentary below. The Why and Wherefore of Wormwood The first issue of Wormwood was set up in the winter of 1959 in a cold Connecticut barn where it was printed on an antique letterpress powered by ginfueled graduate students. Now, fulfillment of subscriptions is guaranteed personally through and including issue 96. Since issue 5, Wormwood has been essentially a one-man operation, with the editor functioning in all capacities reading submissions, editing, typing camera-ready copy, designing/preparing cover art, maintaining correspondence and subscription lists, addressing mailing envelopes, plus functioning as clerk, accountant and fall guy. This feat of nearly 100 issues requires persistence most of all (especially when one is committed for life s essentials to doing another full-time job well). This also implies a continuing infatuation with the printed word. A love of books and magazines and a facility for reading and writing date 223

2 back to the editor s earliest childhood memories and cannot be explained either by heredity or congenial environment probably a counterbalance to the realities of the Great Depression. About 1949 and by chance, the New Directions annuals were discovered. They revealed the existence of the classic literary mags such as STORY, transition, Contact, View, Poetry London and Connolly s Horizon. Once identified, these exemplary mags were each searched out and devoured. This search led to the discovery of mags such as Golden Goose, Black Mountain Review, Origin, Merlin and Zero. These sequentially pointed toward the true, low-budget little mags being printed at that time such as The Deer and the Dachsund, Naked Ear, Inferno, existeria and Hearse. Correspondence was started with Harold Briggs little shop Books n Things (New York City), Judson Crews The Motive Bookshop (Ranches of Taos, New Mexico), Larry Wallrich s Phoenix Bookshop (New York City), Frances Steloffs Gotham Book Mart (New York City) and eventually Jim Lowell s Asphodel Book Shop (Cleveland, Ohio) and Henry Wenning s elegant shop (New Haven, Connecticut). Each of these bookmen was fond of little mags, knowledgeable and a good teacher. Each had a different perspective and taste. An orgy of reading and collecting little mags was launched with Hoffman, Allen and Ulrich s The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography providing backward perspective and James Boyer May s magazine, Trace, providing current addresses and information. After a decade of spending spare time on such activities, becoming an editor was inevitable. All of the above-mentioned magazines are quite different, yet all have influenced the editorial attitude manifested in The Wormwood Review. The influences are probably not all that apparent to the casual reader but that is as it should be. This decade of preparation had also established some guidelines in the editor s brain about what was necessary for a little magazine to function successfully. These guidelines became the philosophy behind Wormwood: (1) avoid publishing oneself and personal friends, (2) avoid being a local magazine and strive for a national and international audience, (3) seek unknown talents rather than establishment or fashionable authors, (4) encourage originality by working with and promoting authors capable of extending the existing patterns of Amerenglish literature, (5) avoid all cults and allegiances and the you-scratchmy-back-and-i-will-scratch-yours approach to publishing, (6) accept the fact that magazine content is more important than format in the long run, (7) presume a literate audience and try to make the mag readable from the first page to the last, (8) restrict the number of pages to no more than 40 per issue since only the insensitive and the masochistic can handle more pages at one sitting, (9) pay bills on time and don t expect special favors in honor of the muse, and lastly and most importantly (10) don t become too serious and righteous. Ignoring the above ten commandments appears to lay the ground for a mag s self-destruction. Very few little mags are terminated by outside forces they self-destruct! It is unrealistic and romantic to believe otherwise. Undoubtedly, Wormie will selfdestruct some day, but it s not possible for the editor to predict when that will be. Every three years the editor rereads the magazine as he prepares a threeyear index and debates whether Wormwood continues to have a function. There 224

3 is no wish for continuation as an end in itself. The responses of readers and contributors, the number of reprint requests, the number of new poets found, etc. are considered. If this analysis is positive, subscription fulfillment is guaranteed for another three years and one proceeds on. The average little mag is organized as a spontaneous publishing vehicle for the editor and his/her friends. Very few items written by this editor have appeared in Wormwood and all of those have been short and written on the spot to fill a blank space when photo-ready copy was being prepared all appear under one of several assumed names. While this stance does seem to assure some degree of editorial honesty, it (of course) does not assure editorial taste. Taste seems to be acquired no other way than by reading acknowledged classics and then a lot of contemporary work and then following one s best instincts. Honestly edited one-man mags may or may not have taste but practically all such are interesting for what they reflect about the editor. It is probably true that collectors like interesting mags while the professors like mags with good taste. Taste on a national/international scale does change with time, and the present editor refuses to worry about whether history will find The Wormwood Review to be interesting or tasteful. Wormie simply exists to publish what the editor chooses to think is important. Originally published in Storrs, Connecticut and for the last 13 years from Stockton, California, Wormwood has been produced in towns virtually lacking a writing/publishing community but since Wormwood has never attempted to be a community or a specialized magazine, it has never had to depend upon local or specialized talent. It has never had significant local support (presently one paid subscriber from Storrs and two paid subscribers in Stockton) and it would be unrealistic to expect such, considering the present TV-oriented culture in the United States. This insularity has proved to be a blessing since it has cut down on the time-consuming and nonproductive small talk, gossip and posturing which seem to be the preoccupation of most literary groups and it has not cut down on productive communications with like-minded individuals elsewhere. The United States Mail still functions reasonably well although becoming progressively more expensive and erratic! Communication with others has been through personal correspondence and the exchange of magazines. The exchange of mags is considered to be especially important for maintaining editorial perspective and editorial health. Wormwood's exchange list usually ranges from 100 to 120 English-language and foreign-language magazines. Wormie balks at exchanges when the other mag is committed to vanity publishing or to selling some cause other than literature. This continuing dialog with authors and other publishers means much to this editor and therefore constitutes a major reason why he continues to publish a little magazine-nothing more than a variation of the pen-pal syndrome. Wormwood is self-funding and nonprofit. Library subscriptions constitute the backbone of the income-their renewals are reasonably predictable and this allows the stability needed for long-range planning. Since the libraries want four issues a year, Wormie takes care to provide four issues a year. Although issue dates are irregular and although two issues are mailed out at a time (obviously

4 this cuts the postal bill and mailing work in half), four issues are produced religiously per year. What is earned per year is exactly correlated with the number of pages and the quality of printing used per year. Wormwood has been printed by letterpress (first and fourth issues), commercial letterpress (second issue), paper-plate offset (the lean years) and presently by traditional offset means. In the first decade, mimeographed sheets (devoted to news, reviews and commentary) were stapled in with the other sheets, but this has not been done since the press was moved to Stockton (a mimeograph is not easily accessible here). The editor s time is donated wholly to balance the press s budget. Since his professional salary cannot support a magazine and a family of four, the mag must earn its way in the so-called good old American tradition of free enterprise. Any dependency on funding agencies, such as CCLM or NEA, is resisted. To encourage individual subscriptions, the yearly price is kept as low as possible. Because of the recent postal rate increases, the cost has just been raised from $4.50 to $5.00 for four consecutive issues. This virtually guarantees that any person (who really wants to) can subscribe. There are very few individually crafted products these days that sell four for $5.00. The economically sad truth is that the reading audience of little magazines is very limited if one ignores the audience associated with library subscriptions. This audience is almost exclusively limited to active writers (of all ages) with egos strong enough to read and enjoy others work plus, of course, the rare individuals who are little mag readers and collectors by preference. The audience is select but the market limited. The $5.00 subscription price and the limited audience dictate that one must use offset processes for printing a 40-page magazine, use saddle-stitching, and restrict oneself to one-color printing. Then (and only then) will income balance expense. If one mimeographs the entire mag, then a profit is certainly possible. A fancy, slick-paper, multicolor format will definitely sell copies in bookstores and newsstands where impulse buying is common, but magazines such as TriQuarterly and The Paris Review are frequently bought only for coffee-table display and not for reading. One copy can last for years if the colors fit in with the decor! However, TriQuarterly and The Paris Review (generally considered to be successful magazines) also do not make a profit. This editor believes in the principle that a little mag is nothing if it is not read. Wormwood is after a live audience even if limited in size. The editor frequently dreams of publishing a magazine with the present editorial policy (plus prose) packaged in a format with the physical heft and feel of Botteghe Oscure and illustrated with very well-reproduced photographs of contributors but this is clearly a dream. Wormwood does not distribute to bookstores or newsstands simply because it cannot afford to. During the first ten years, serious attempts to do this were made, but these businesses almost universally regarded it as good business not to settle accounts with such a small operator. Their philosophy seemed to be that little magazines always fold so why turn good money back to a doomed operation? Such a philosophy is fool-proof good Yankee business sense, but it does insure that the small mags do fail. One key to a magazine s survival is to just not attempt such distribution and concentrate on getting subscribers. It is 226

5 this editor s impression that the real audience for little mags does not do much impulse buying they seem to browse in libraries first and then subscribe to the 4-6 mags that most satisfy their literary appetite. These individuals also tend not to discard their little mags which makes them amateur collectors. A word-ofmouth recommendation from these fans does sell subscriptions, and in our subscription list it is possible to trace the genealogy of a new subscriber back several generations. Cid Corman once indicated in a letter that he thought it useful to have each issue of Origin associated in the public s mind with one poet, so that readers spoke of the new Charles Olson issue or the Creeley. This concept appealed and so Wormie instituted its yellow-paper center sections of 8-24 pages devoted to one poet or one idea. Subscribers like the idea and it does provide an unusually good showcase for a young poet. Twenty to forty copies are signed by the featured author and half are retained by Wormwood to distribute to patrons and friends of the press, while the remaining half become the signer s property. Poets featured to date have been: David Barker (issues 75 and 84), John Bennett (55), Harold E. Briggs (40), Charles Bukowski (16,24, 53, 71, 81/82), William S. Burroughs (36), Judson Crews (19, 58, 83), John Currier (44), Sanford Dorbin (42), Ian Hamilton Finlay (14), Hugh Fox (32), Don Gray (26), Oliver Haddo (27, 28, 39), Aired Starr Hamilton (61), Dick Higgins (25), Gloria Kenison (23, 26), Jim Klein (scheduled for 86), Ronald Koertge (29, 35, 51,63), Carl Larsen (11), Lyn Lifshin (47, 59, 65, 78, 85), Gerald Locklin (31, 50, 64, 67, 76), Leo Mailman (77), Wilma Elizabeth McDaniels (scheduled for 87), A1 Masarik (57), Ann Menebroker (54), Jack Micheline (37), Joyce Odam (49), Christopher Perret (21, 30), Ben Pleasants (38, 52, 72), Bern Porter (41), Ray Puechner (27, 28, 39), Steve Richmond (43, 70), Kirk Robertson (60, 69), Paul St. Vincent (74), Walter Snow (46), Richard Snyder (56), Charles Stetler (48), Brian Swann (68), Richard Vargas (73), William Wantling (15, 36), Charles Webb (62), Jon Edgar Webb/The Outsider (45), and Phil Weidman (33, 79). The writing styles of this group are disparate in the extreme as are their ages, personalities and backgrounds all deserve a greater reading audience. Issue 17 was devoted to the Le Metro poets; issue 34 to female poets; and issue 80 to Wormwood's birthday celebration. The most bittersweet award an author can receive today is the annual Wormwood Award for the most overlooked book of worth for a calendar year. Certain of the awardees are now well known, but were not at the time of the award. A single review in some other magazine can disqualify one. Here is the list: 1961: Alexander Trocchi, The Outsiders (Signet); 1962: Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night (Gold Medal); 1963: James Drought, The Secret (Skylight); 1964: Russell Edson, The Very Thing That Happens (New Directions); 1965: Christopher Perret, Memoirs o f a Parasite (Hors Commerce Press/Jim Callahan); 1966: Stanley Crawford, Gascoyne (Putnam); 1967: Peter Wild, The Good Fox (The Goodly Co.); 1968: Ian Hamilton Finlay, 3 Blue Lemons (Wild Hawthorne Press); 1969: Charles Bukowski, Notes o f a Dirty Old Man (Essex); 1970: Lorine Neidecker, My Life by Water (Fulcrum); 1971: Jonathan Williams, Blue & Roots/Rue & Bluets (Grossman); 1972: Gerald Locklin, Poop, and Other Poems 227

6 229 (MAGPress); 1973: Ronald Koertge, The Father Poems (Sumac); 1974: Steve Richmond, Earth Rose (Earth Press); 1975: Lyn Lifshin, Shaker House Poems (Tideline); 1976: Phil Weidman, After the Dance (Orchard Press); 1977: Joseph Nicholson, The Dam Builder (The Fault); 1978: Charles Webb, Zinjanthropus Disease (Querencia Press); 1979: Michael Kasper, Chinese English Sentence Cards: A Novelette (Imaginary Press); 1980: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, Tollbridge: Poems (Contact II Publications). Certainly these books should not have been ignored, and the editor does enjoy the reading that is necessary to make a selection. Nominations are gratefully accepted by mail. The present little mag scene appears reasonably healthy, but it does not have the pure excitement and dedication of the decade when anyone with a mimeograph was in business and fiercely independent. In the decade, many magazines shifted their focus from the art of the printed word to the art of grantsmanship these arts are not equivalent. Wormwood has never wasted its limited space on scholarly, semi-scholarly, or non-scholarly criticism, preferring to print the stuff that criticism feeds on. Instead, Wormie has always run extensive free listings of new mags and little press publications. The general philosophy was to push the art of the word, the idea of subscription and purchase-and to push the concept that the little mag scene was large and varied enough to provide each reader with something desirable, no matter what his/her taste might be. Infighting for prestige, grant monies, positions on review boards, etc., did not seem to be what Wormwood was all about. Consequently, Wormie has never battled for literary turf... preferring to let history decide. Consequently, we missed much of the fun of the 70s. Literary infighting now is quite common and the object appears not to be literature but the control of federal/state monies for writing and publishing. Government functionaries are not kindly disposed toward creators of the printed word literature s allocation of monies is only a very small fraction of that dumped on the performing arts. A larger audience is needed in the United States for contemporary literature, and a significant advance in this regard has been made since 1960 due exclusively to the little publishers and not due to the big publishers of New York City and environs. If the infighting within the little magazine/small press scene continues and becomes more public, both the developing audience and the scraps of federal/state monies will surely be lost. When the infighting involves writers it is very easy for the contenders to use choice adjectives as weapons and then have the words picked up by the press. The scraps of money doled out for literature are hardly worth fighting about in the final analysis. Although probably a controversial opinion, this editor believes that the very steady increase in the number of little mags which began in the decade and which flowered in the decade was due more to better communication between editors and between editors and authors than to grant monies and the increased availability of low-cost printing services after all, the mimeograph had been around a long time before the so-called mimeograph revolution. Whether one is an author or editor, there is no greater stimulation than the discovery of a like-minded editor in the next town, the next state, or in England,

7 or in Brazil. This facilitation of communications can be correlated with the founding of the little magazine called Trace) which served originally as a little magazine/small press directory. Prior to this time, accurate, up-to-date addresses were difficult to find, especially for foreign publishers. Later on the magazine decided to print literature in addition to functioning as a directory and was not too successful in this regard. After its failure, the directory function was taken over by Len Fulton who launched the Directory o f Little Magazines in Issued annually, this essential book is now titled the International Directory o f Little Magazines and Small Presses. In 1973 another book was produced which has facilitated communications within the national literary community: A Directory o f American Poets, published by Poets and Writers Inc. of New York City. Prior to this time, such listings were restricted to established and fashionable individuals and the addresses were usually in care of some agent. In 1976, the same group published A Directory o f American Fiction Writers. These books tend to hold the little mag/small press scene together and allow outsiders to sense the dimensions and vitality of the contemporary literary community. A condensed (but quite comprehensive) appraisal of the little mag scene of the decade from the viewpoint of this editor/collector has been published in Vagabond (No. 19, pp , 1974). The trends begun in that volatile decade are just now beginning to surface in the products of the establishment presses. As television has tended to wipe out distinct dialects within the United States, so also has TV tended to spread corruption of language to all levels of society. Merchandizers write words to sell products (corn flakes, politicians, electrical appliances, attitudes, automobiles, life styles) via the national media and, if the products sell, these writers are valued and generously awarded with cash. Such writers usually make no claims that their output constitutes truth or high literature even though it is successful in moving/manipulating people. The public (using the same logic) measures the worth of creative writers (those aspiring to high literature) by media reports of the magnitude of their cash advances and whether or not there are secondary contracts for soft-bound editions and movie/tv versions. It is ironic that true poets and wordsmiths can now owe their reputations more to merchandizing (the words of others) than to their own verbal and creative skills Orwell s key year of 1984 is here. The little magazine/small press scene seems to be a healthy antidote to all of this. On the last page of issue after issue, Wormwood has reprinted this quote from poet/artist Jean Arp s Dadaland it seems to sum up the role of the little publisher in modern society: We were seeking an art based on fundamentals to cure the madness of the age and a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hall. We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men s minds