Highlights from this issue:
The first column in The New Age is always "Notes of the Week." This week's is a really interesting piece on a railway worker who was fired for being drunk OFF duty. Unfortunately for the railroad companies, this guy Knox was a forty year veteran railroadman who was always sober on the job and friends with every worker in England: the injustice led to a 10000 man strike. They were protecting, as the column points out, their freedom from having every moment of their lives scrutinzed and regulated.
Beatrice Hastings continues her assault on the "White Slave Bill," which has been passed in the last week without much substantial debate (much to her chagrin). She calls out the people who want flogging reinstated to recognize the connection between violence and lust, adroitly turning the tables on the moralists. I can't help but feel like the truth must be somewhere between the two extremes I have encountered in these last issues: women need more substantial protection under the law, but the lust for blood has clouded the real issue. There's a certain women's-lib edge to Hastings, who (if she is right) is claiming that women deserve the freedom to leave the strict moral universe of post-Victorian England. Which of course they do. But the picture she paints of prostitution is much more of the courtesan than the streetwalker. Arthur Rose's short story "The Downfall of Elizabeth," later in this issue, must be by Hastings or a sympathizer.
Things get a little postmodern (early) in the "Present Day Criticism" reviews section: in which the author (Orage?) reviews a reviewer, pointing out that his christmassey schmaltz is hilariously bad.
The Insurance Act, including compulsory contributions, is just like Obama's health care plan. But 1912.
And one more before I'm up to date on The New Age. Then other reports.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The New Age December 12 1912
It's been a while, I can't really explain why. But I've been reading along, even if I haven't been writing, so I'll do a whirlwind set of posts today to make up for the gap.
First, The New Age Dec. 12th.
Romney's "Military Notes" are growing more disturbing, as when he declares that "tactical finesse" is "a positive danger" when soldiers should "simply go straight forward at their mark." Hello Somme. More on this next post, in which he takes this idea farther.
"The New Servitude" has a very familiar feel, claiming that business is unfairly speeding up the level of production without raising wages. This all funnels into advocating guild socialism, of course.
"More Hygienic Jinks," the column that satirizes public health issues, has a great depiction of the eugenics movement as a confused and intentionally confusing mass of pretensions.
John Masefield is brutally attacked in "Present Day Criticism." Might relate that to the dueling reviews of Masefield that will come up in Poetry at some point...
As has often happened in The New Age, the real gems are in the letters to the editor. R. B. Kerr responds to Pound's earlier claim that America doesn't have any geniuses by agreeing! Blames American lack of leisure. I wish I could blame the same for my late posts.
Really the most startling debate in the magazine is the struggle over the "White Slave Bill." Bewildering--it seems like the Archbishop of Canterbury and company are trying to bring back flogging as a punishment for pimps and johns. They have a groundswell of more moderate support from people who want to end sex trafficking in England. But Beatrice Hastings is dead against it. My picture of Hastings continues to develop: in this issue, a woman writes to her with an example of a time she met a prostitute who was being held against her will (and who the police did not protect). Hastings reiterates her earlier position that women cannot be forcibly made into prostitutes, then doubles down by attacking equal suffrage! I want to discuss this with an expert... maybe I'll try to find a book.
Onward.
First, The New Age Dec. 12th.
Romney's "Military Notes" are growing more disturbing, as when he declares that "tactical finesse" is "a positive danger" when soldiers should "simply go straight forward at their mark." Hello Somme. More on this next post, in which he takes this idea farther.
"The New Servitude" has a very familiar feel, claiming that business is unfairly speeding up the level of production without raising wages. This all funnels into advocating guild socialism, of course.
"More Hygienic Jinks," the column that satirizes public health issues, has a great depiction of the eugenics movement as a confused and intentionally confusing mass of pretensions.
John Masefield is brutally attacked in "Present Day Criticism." Might relate that to the dueling reviews of Masefield that will come up in Poetry at some point...
As has often happened in The New Age, the real gems are in the letters to the editor. R. B. Kerr responds to Pound's earlier claim that America doesn't have any geniuses by agreeing! Blames American lack of leisure. I wish I could blame the same for my late posts.
Really the most startling debate in the magazine is the struggle over the "White Slave Bill." Bewildering--it seems like the Archbishop of Canterbury and company are trying to bring back flogging as a punishment for pimps and johns. They have a groundswell of more moderate support from people who want to end sex trafficking in England. But Beatrice Hastings is dead against it. My picture of Hastings continues to develop: in this issue, a woman writes to her with an example of a time she met a prostitute who was being held against her will (and who the police did not protect). Hastings reiterates her earlier position that women cannot be forcibly made into prostitutes, then doubles down by attacking equal suffrage! I want to discuss this with an expert... maybe I'll try to find a book.
Onward.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The New Age December 5 1912
Hello anyone,
It’s been a short while since my last post—end-of-quarter rush has pushed the blog to the backburner, for a moment at least. But I don’t want to get behind, and the relentlessness of The New Age compels me to take a break from writing my seminar paper (on Aldington, I’m gonna post on the neat stuff I found lying around the library soon). At some point (I’ll try to find it tomorrow, I think it was in his autobiography Life for Life’s Sake), Aldington commented on the near-legendary status that A. R. Orage had in his own lifetime. I can see why. The weekly pace is intense.
This post’ll be a quick one. My favorite discovery this week was a furious review of Rupert Brooke’s poem “Mary and Gabriel.” A sexy poem indeed, and it certainly caused a scandal: “Beginning boldly : “Young Mary, loitering once,” this young man nibbles after all the supposititious sensations of the Virgin. His licence is only limited by the exactions of printed matter. We may conclude, for certain, that his thoughts left nothing unstated… Mr. Rupert Brooke is a youth of evil taste” (109). Now, I’m not a scholar of Brooke, but I’ve encountered him primarily as a jingoistic war poet. Claudia Emerson pointed out his incredible last fragment—it begins “I strayed about the deck” and should be easily Googlable. Apparently that one was written the night he died, or the night he sickened. It’s really great to see him as a sacrilegious rapscallion instead of a tragic warmonger. Sort of hilariously, the first google hit I got when tracking this poem down was a religious anthology.
A moment more to follow up on the duels in the “Letters to the Editor.” Pound is vanquished, Hastings escalates. It’s been largely out of my experience to read Pound being contrite: “Sir,-I regret the haste and ill-considered phrasing of my letter of two weeks since. I regret its ambiguities. I have, it seems, been as much bored by uninformed pro-Turks as Mr. Pickthall has been by uninformed pro-Bulgars” (116). And the letter goes on largely in that vein. Worth a look.
Hastings, you might remember, is writing that girls cannot be forced into prostitution. She counters a letter alleging the opposite by calling its examples “myths.” But where it gets interesting is where she shifts the terms of the debate—calling out the anti-“white slavery” lobby for its bloodlust. Apparently they were pushing to bring back flogging as punishment for pimps. This line doesn’t show any signs of dying soon.
Right, gotta get back to work. More soon as winter break starts.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Poetry November 1912
I hope all my readers (so far I haven't gotten a pageview) will forgive a short backtrack to pick up some things from November 1912's Poetry. This was the second issue--the editorial board has created an "Open Door" policy, and H. M. vigorously defends the cause of printing "minor poets" (62) How far they've come.
I won't spend too long on this issue because I have so many other things to review and feel like going too far back into November is against the spirit of the project (in my imagination, 1912 Tyler Babbie would be poring over the December issue). But I've been thinking about Richard Aldington, and might as well blog about him.
Aldington's Poetry debut is the opening shot of Imagism. While there are many competing narratives about the beginnings of Imagism, I like Cyrena Pondrom's revisionary "H.D. and the Origins of Imagism," originally published in this issue of Sagetrieb. I'd like to shout-out to my friends at the National Poetry Foundation for their awesome journals (which I used to work on). Pondrom's thesis is (as I recall, I don't have it in front of me right now) that Pound was caught aback by the strength of H.D.'s imagist poems, making him the lead theorist rather than the lead practitioner of Imagism. She compares Aldington unfavorably to H.D. as well. As an H.D. enthusiast, I mostly agree. But "To a Greek Marble" has direct address, and "Aux Viex Jardin" gets most of its power through multiple juxtapositions. They aren't as intense H.D.'s poems, that I'll agree with, but they might be trying to do something different. That studied elegance I mentioned last post. I'll be thinking about this.
Had to do some Wikipeding to understand Harriet Monroe's "Nogi" (50). Creepy.
Last thought: the poetry of Charles Hanson Towne seems pretty indicative of another major trend in poetry that is now mostly forgotten: "cosmic" romantic poetry, sort of starfaring mystical anthrosophic speculations that are charmingly fervant. I noticed a tendancy to the cosmic in some minor Italian Futurist poets--it seems that in English, or at least in the case of Imagism, the avant garde defined themselves against the cosmic (by being austere), but that might not be the case everywhere. Will be thinking about this.
I won't spend too long on this issue because I have so many other things to review and feel like going too far back into November is against the spirit of the project (in my imagination, 1912 Tyler Babbie would be poring over the December issue). But I've been thinking about Richard Aldington, and might as well blog about him.
Aldington's Poetry debut is the opening shot of Imagism. While there are many competing narratives about the beginnings of Imagism, I like Cyrena Pondrom's revisionary "H.D. and the Origins of Imagism," originally published in this issue of Sagetrieb. I'd like to shout-out to my friends at the National Poetry Foundation for their awesome journals (which I used to work on). Pondrom's thesis is (as I recall, I don't have it in front of me right now) that Pound was caught aback by the strength of H.D.'s imagist poems, making him the lead theorist rather than the lead practitioner of Imagism. She compares Aldington unfavorably to H.D. as well. As an H.D. enthusiast, I mostly agree. But "To a Greek Marble" has direct address, and "Aux Viex Jardin" gets most of its power through multiple juxtapositions. They aren't as intense H.D.'s poems, that I'll agree with, but they might be trying to do something different. That studied elegance I mentioned last post. I'll be thinking about this.
Had to do some Wikipeding to understand Harriet Monroe's "Nogi" (50). Creepy.
Last thought: the poetry of Charles Hanson Towne seems pretty indicative of another major trend in poetry that is now mostly forgotten: "cosmic" romantic poetry, sort of starfaring mystical anthrosophic speculations that are charmingly fervant. I noticed a tendancy to the cosmic in some minor Italian Futurist poets--it seems that in English, or at least in the case of Imagism, the avant garde defined themselves against the cosmic (by being austere), but that might not be the case everywhere. Will be thinking about this.
The New Age November 28 1912
The weekly pace of The New Age is already quite intense--it is as comprehensive as it is often difficult to comprehend. First, a few revelations in form: I had gathered that there were some regular columns, or at least recurring topics, in The New Age. This week's issue continues several of the last week's columns, "Foreign Affairs," the humorous "Current Cant," "Guild Socialism," "The Black Crusade" (see last post), and "Pastiche," which appears to be a sort of guest authored literary piece. There is also a poetry section and reviews, as last week.
I'm having trouble choosing a featured article for this week, so I'll probably just dawdle through a few before posting on any of them.
First, I was excited to see Richard Aldington's poetry make an appearance--I'm currently working on a paper on Aldington that I'll be presenting at MLA in January. He's published a set of translations from Latin written by medieval/renaissance Italians. I'll try to put the split that I see developing in poetry circa 1912 in my post on this month's Poetry, but Aldington's prose poems in The New Age are radically plain--a sharp contrast to the Italian translations of Ezra Pound. I think Pound went to Cavalcanti et. al. to dazzle, while Aldington is trying for an austere elegance. "To the Winds, The Prayer of Idmon," a translation of Andrea Navigerius, caught my eye because it seems to be a matched pair to the second half of H.D.'s "Garden" (aka "Heat"), a poem that Robert Duncan considered formative. Only H.D.'s is a poem of intense emotion, while Aldington's is far softer (H.D. asks the wind to "rend," Aldington asks it to "assuage").
One thing I failed to mention last week was the ongoing debate in the magazine about the regulation of prostitution. One side says that prostitution leads to what we now call human trafficking--then called "white slavery," a vision of young English girls being kidnapped and sold for sex in Buenos Aires. But The New Age doesn't offer much for me to really understand the scope of the issue, because they seem to just satirize the whole problem. Beatrice Hastings attacks the notion that women can be enslaved against their will--which to me seems naive. I'm going to keep an eye out for more on this issue.
This issue includes a collision between Hastings and Pound. Last week I wrote about Pound's furious anti-Turkish letter to the editor. This week Marmaduke Pickthall (of "Black Crusade") responded with this eviscerating comment: "Mr. Ezra Pound writes as one who, knowing nothing of a subject, cannot endure to hear a word about it" (93). But the real prize is Hastings' pseudonymous response (as T. K. L., and thank you kindly to the MJP for tagging her pseudonyms!). She satirizes Pound by comically agreeing and disagreeing with him. The first line, "Sir, as an abosolutely regular occasional contributor" made me laugh out loud. She continues in the persona of an angry jingoistic bigoted Englishman--calling out "The 'decadant Greek and the pestilent Bulgar,' according to our friend Pound's description, and I add the mean Montenegrin and the unspeakable Servian, are already marked off the map, Sir, and a good job!" etc. etc.
Alright--this is probably how things'll shape up in this project: zooming in on the stuff that interests me most, rather than providing the sort of index-post like last time. I'm off to work on Rhythm and Poetry.
I'm having trouble choosing a featured article for this week, so I'll probably just dawdle through a few before posting on any of them.
First, I was excited to see Richard Aldington's poetry make an appearance--I'm currently working on a paper on Aldington that I'll be presenting at MLA in January. He's published a set of translations from Latin written by medieval/renaissance Italians. I'll try to put the split that I see developing in poetry circa 1912 in my post on this month's Poetry, but Aldington's prose poems in The New Age are radically plain--a sharp contrast to the Italian translations of Ezra Pound. I think Pound went to Cavalcanti et. al. to dazzle, while Aldington is trying for an austere elegance. "To the Winds, The Prayer of Idmon," a translation of Andrea Navigerius, caught my eye because it seems to be a matched pair to the second half of H.D.'s "Garden" (aka "Heat"), a poem that Robert Duncan considered formative. Only H.D.'s is a poem of intense emotion, while Aldington's is far softer (H.D. asks the wind to "rend," Aldington asks it to "assuage").
One thing I failed to mention last week was the ongoing debate in the magazine about the regulation of prostitution. One side says that prostitution leads to what we now call human trafficking--then called "white slavery," a vision of young English girls being kidnapped and sold for sex in Buenos Aires. But The New Age doesn't offer much for me to really understand the scope of the issue, because they seem to just satirize the whole problem. Beatrice Hastings attacks the notion that women can be enslaved against their will--which to me seems naive. I'm going to keep an eye out for more on this issue.
This issue includes a collision between Hastings and Pound. Last week I wrote about Pound's furious anti-Turkish letter to the editor. This week Marmaduke Pickthall (of "Black Crusade") responded with this eviscerating comment: "Mr. Ezra Pound writes as one who, knowing nothing of a subject, cannot endure to hear a word about it" (93). But the real prize is Hastings' pseudonymous response (as T. K. L., and thank you kindly to the MJP for tagging her pseudonyms!). She satirizes Pound by comically agreeing and disagreeing with him. The first line, "Sir, as an abosolutely regular occasional contributor" made me laugh out loud. She continues in the persona of an angry jingoistic bigoted Englishman--calling out "The 'decadant Greek and the pestilent Bulgar,' according to our friend Pound's description, and I add the mean Montenegrin and the unspeakable Servian, are already marked off the map, Sir, and a good job!" etc. etc.
Alright--this is probably how things'll shape up in this project: zooming in on the stuff that interests me most, rather than providing the sort of index-post like last time. I'm off to work on Rhythm and Poetry.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Timeline!
The MJP Lab has an interactive timeline! I was working on making one myself, so this is nice to find. I'm in a Digital Humanities class with Brian Reed where he showed us the software that was used to make this timeline--and this is a perfect application that will be extremely helpful for my project. Only it reminded me that I need to read The Blue Review and other magazines I'd sort of... forgotten about.
Next New Age very soon, and I'll try to catch the November monthlies before the month is over.
Here's the Timeline
Next New Age very soon, and I'll try to catch the November monthlies before the month is over.
Here's the Timeline
Monday, November 26, 2012
The New Age November 21 1912
Today's my first Review Review!
My first post will be on The New Age,Volume 12, Number 3, London: The New Age Press, Ltd., 1912-11-21.
First, I'll feature an article in the review. Then I'll post a few short comments on pieces that caught my eye.
My featured article from 100 years ago is "The New Frankenstein" by Muriel Wells (pg. 64). It's an excellent satire of F. T. Marinetti and his Futurists--what would happen if Marinetti was actually face to face with the superman? And it turned out to be a vampiric baby? I am morbidly fascinated by the Italian Futurists through my tendancy to literary masochism (clue to why I'm starting this project?), and this was perfect. I have read many pieces that satire/that engage the satire of modernist art (Leonard Diepeveen's The Difficulties of Modernism comes to mind as a book full of good examples of responses to modernist art), but I have yet to find one that inhabits the imaginary realm of a movement it opposes in such a forthright fashion. It's a little gem of a gothic surrealist response to the Italian Futurists. Highly recommended, short enough for a flittering internet-moment, check it out. Who is Muriel Wells? Any help identifying her would be appreciated: I can't find anything online, will ask around.
As part of my project is to try to point out other important pieces that might be useful to someone, here's the cream of the crop for The New Age 1912-11-21:
"Military Notes" by Romney (pg. 52 no first name, Mitt? Who shares space with "S. Verdad," who wrote the article before it? Is this journal completely composed by pseudonym?), who writes about the military of Serbia, which has just engaged Turkey in what will be known as the First Balkan War. But the piece is more about how much other reporters don't actually go see the truth for themselves. A strangely introspective piece of journalism, one that is quite saddening in my own retrospective mind.
"Guild Socialism" (54, no author), about the way the trust system naturally overproduces and damages everyone involved. The solution? Employee-owned companies. Strangely relevant, if significantly dated, it makes me think about how Ezra Pound is steeping in this particular pot o' tea.
"The Black Crusade III" by Marmaduke Pickthall (58), a predictably racist-against-Arabs piece less predictably about how England should support Turkey. But at the end, there's a creepy premonition from Pickthall that broken promises to Islamic nations will "cause more trouble, in the long run, than a European War." Jury still out? Also see Pound's response below.
"The Winter's Tale in 1856" by E. Leigh-Bennet (60), someone doing something similar the thing I'm doing: reviewing a play 56 years later. Calls 'em prudes for their Victorian moralizing.
"Art" by Anthony Ludovici (66), a skewering of (what I call) modern visual art by a critic who claims that the real trick of modernism lies in how it lets mediocrity pass as quality. Delightful in the light of Stuckist "remodernism" etc. It's possible to change "Post-Impressionism" to "postmodernism" and have this piece read as current.
"An Affair of Politics" (68) by Alice Morning (pseudonym of pseudonym Beatrice Hastings), the only piece in the issue that feels like real modernist art. A cool stream-of-consciousness short story. Reading up on Hastings made me wonder why I hadn't heard of her before (unless I have, and if I have, apologies to the source). I read that she'll be coming up often in The New Age and I'm glad for that.
The letter to the editor about Inksters is a laugh.
Finally, naturally, the letter to the editor by Ezra Pound caught my eye. He was a contributor to the magazine in earlier issues (before the scope of this project). But this letter is my first canonical modernist moment in the project. It's a rant against the pro-Turkish Black Crusade articles above. Pound claims that monopolistic industry is propping up Turkey and ruining freedom across the world. I wonder how my synchronic view of Pound will evolve during this extended project. The Pound apology that he lost it during WWII doesn't quite jive with the Glen Beck-ishness of this letter.
Signing off for now, can't believe there's a new one of these in two days. Hope I can hack the pace. Don't miss the nice caricature of Joseph Conrad on the back of this issue.
My first post will be on The New Age,Volume 12, Number 3, London: The New Age Press, Ltd., 1912-11-21.
First, I'll feature an article in the review. Then I'll post a few short comments on pieces that caught my eye.
My featured article from 100 years ago is "The New Frankenstein" by Muriel Wells (pg. 64). It's an excellent satire of F. T. Marinetti and his Futurists--what would happen if Marinetti was actually face to face with the superman? And it turned out to be a vampiric baby? I am morbidly fascinated by the Italian Futurists through my tendancy to literary masochism (clue to why I'm starting this project?), and this was perfect. I have read many pieces that satire/that engage the satire of modernist art (Leonard Diepeveen's The Difficulties of Modernism comes to mind as a book full of good examples of responses to modernist art), but I have yet to find one that inhabits the imaginary realm of a movement it opposes in such a forthright fashion. It's a little gem of a gothic surrealist response to the Italian Futurists. Highly recommended, short enough for a flittering internet-moment, check it out. Who is Muriel Wells? Any help identifying her would be appreciated: I can't find anything online, will ask around.
As part of my project is to try to point out other important pieces that might be useful to someone, here's the cream of the crop for The New Age 1912-11-21:
"Military Notes" by Romney (pg. 52 no first name, Mitt? Who shares space with "S. Verdad," who wrote the article before it? Is this journal completely composed by pseudonym?), who writes about the military of Serbia, which has just engaged Turkey in what will be known as the First Balkan War. But the piece is more about how much other reporters don't actually go see the truth for themselves. A strangely introspective piece of journalism, one that is quite saddening in my own retrospective mind.
"Guild Socialism" (54, no author), about the way the trust system naturally overproduces and damages everyone involved. The solution? Employee-owned companies. Strangely relevant, if significantly dated, it makes me think about how Ezra Pound is steeping in this particular pot o' tea.
"The Black Crusade III" by Marmaduke Pickthall (58), a predictably racist-against-Arabs piece less predictably about how England should support Turkey. But at the end, there's a creepy premonition from Pickthall that broken promises to Islamic nations will "cause more trouble, in the long run, than a European War." Jury still out? Also see Pound's response below.
"The Winter's Tale in 1856" by E. Leigh-Bennet (60), someone doing something similar the thing I'm doing: reviewing a play 56 years later. Calls 'em prudes for their Victorian moralizing.
"Art" by Anthony Ludovici (66), a skewering of (what I call) modern visual art by a critic who claims that the real trick of modernism lies in how it lets mediocrity pass as quality. Delightful in the light of Stuckist "remodernism" etc. It's possible to change "Post-Impressionism" to "postmodernism" and have this piece read as current.
"An Affair of Politics" (68) by Alice Morning (pseudonym of pseudonym Beatrice Hastings), the only piece in the issue that feels like real modernist art. A cool stream-of-consciousness short story. Reading up on Hastings made me wonder why I hadn't heard of her before (unless I have, and if I have, apologies to the source). I read that she'll be coming up often in The New Age and I'm glad for that.
The letter to the editor about Inksters is a laugh.
Finally, naturally, the letter to the editor by Ezra Pound caught my eye. He was a contributor to the magazine in earlier issues (before the scope of this project). But this letter is my first canonical modernist moment in the project. It's a rant against the pro-Turkish Black Crusade articles above. Pound claims that monopolistic industry is propping up Turkey and ruining freedom across the world. I wonder how my synchronic view of Pound will evolve during this extended project. The Pound apology that he lost it during WWII doesn't quite jive with the Glen Beck-ishness of this letter.
Signing off for now, can't believe there's a new one of these in two days. Hope I can hack the pace. Don't miss the nice caricature of Joseph Conrad on the back of this issue.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Free Subscription Shows Up Late
Here's the idea: what if I could subscribe to the most important modernist reviews and journals for free, but they wouldn't show up for 100 years? With the incredible Modernist Journals Project, I have the chance to simulate that experience.
What I'll do: I'll read the journals on the MJP as they appear, 100 years later, starting on November 18th 2012. November 1912. Then I'll post reviews of what I find. The idea is that I'll have a unique perspective as I experience modernism as it emerges in (postponed) real time. I'm especially interested in modernist poetry--I will probably focus on poetry as it emerges in these many-sided journals and reviews. I'll pay attention to what emerges around poetry so I can understand it in its originial setting, but won't always have time or space to go over everything in detail.
Some of the most important journals are already gone: "The Freewoman" just printed its last issue, but is yet to reincarnate as "The New Freewoman." Ford Madox Heuffer hasn't been in charge of "The English Review" for about two years [this is a correction from an earlier post, I had misunderstood the chronology on the MJP--ed.].
Many of most important journals have yet to begin. In the MJP's database, only a handful of journals are active as of Nov. 1912.
Poetry just published its second issue--I may rewind and do a review of the first issue sometime. The second will be my first review.
The New Age weekly releases a new issue in a few days (Nov 21, 1912), so perhaps it will be my first post. I'm already intimidated by the heft and speed of The New Age. I'm pretty sure I won't be reading all of every New Age, but I'll do my best to keep up with its poetry.
The Crisis, W. E. B. DuBois's "Record of the Darker Races" is in full swing. More on that soon.
Posts on those three soon!
What I'll do: I'll read the journals on the MJP as they appear, 100 years later, starting on November 18th 2012. November 1912. Then I'll post reviews of what I find. The idea is that I'll have a unique perspective as I experience modernism as it emerges in (postponed) real time. I'm especially interested in modernist poetry--I will probably focus on poetry as it emerges in these many-sided journals and reviews. I'll pay attention to what emerges around poetry so I can understand it in its originial setting, but won't always have time or space to go over everything in detail.
Some of the most important journals are already gone: "The Freewoman" just printed its last issue, but is yet to reincarnate as "The New Freewoman." Ford Madox Heuffer hasn't been in charge of "The English Review" for about two years [this is a correction from an earlier post, I had misunderstood the chronology on the MJP--ed.].
Many of most important journals have yet to begin. In the MJP's database, only a handful of journals are active as of Nov. 1912.
Poetry just published its second issue--I may rewind and do a review of the first issue sometime. The second will be my first review.
The New Age weekly releases a new issue in a few days (Nov 21, 1912), so perhaps it will be my first post. I'm already intimidated by the heft and speed of The New Age. I'm pretty sure I won't be reading all of every New Age, but I'll do my best to keep up with its poetry.
The Crisis, W. E. B. DuBois's "Record of the Darker Races" is in full swing. More on that soon.
Posts on those three soon!
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