Squandermania

Hart Crane sitting the wrong way round on a chair.

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:06:06 -0500

Hart Crane sitting the wrong way round on a chair.

explore-blog: Celestial Homework – a reading list for Allen...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:29:01 -0500

explore-blog:

Celestial Homework – a reading list for Allen Ginsberg’s class “The History of the Beats.”

Howard Finster, self-publisher. From a secret collection that...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:28:28 -0500

Howard Finster, self-publisher. From a secret collection that can be yours!

thevictorianlady: Lord Byron’s Orthopedic Boot. Byron was born...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:09:15 -0500

thevictorianlady:

Lord Byron’s Orthopedic Boot.

Byron was born with a club foot, and was forced to wear painful corrective footwear, like the shoe shown above. As a child, he hated wearing his brace, and even threw one of his boots into a pond. The small size (10cm) of this shoe indicates that he wore it as a child.

theparisreview: Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) The...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:07:04 -0500

theparisreview:

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) The cenotaph of Charles-Pierre Baudelaire by Jose de Charmoy depicts the poet brooding over a gauze-encased body. In the year before his death, Baudelaire, resting in a nursing home and left all but mute from advanced syphilis, nevertheless enjoyed some respite from his deepening depression. He took special pleasure in his many visitors, in Berthe Morisot’s playing Wagner on the piano, and in the numerous flowers which grew in the yard outside the home. His condition also allowed his mother, Caroline, one last chance to play a maternal role and thereby attempt a long overdue reconciliation. According to his mother, Baudelaire died with a smile on his lips.

From the portfolio “Permanent Parisians” in issue 99, Spring 1986.

Dylan Thomas self-portrait of a drunken Dylan Thomas.

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:59:39 -0500

Dylan Thomas self-portrait of a drunken Dylan Thomas.

Sylvia Plath annotates The Great Gatsby!

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:31:44 -0500

Sylvia Plath annotates The Great Gatsby!

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Wed, 08 May 2013 15:58:49 -0500

poetrysince1912: Poetry is now available via a digital...

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:40:54 -0500

poetrysince1912:

Poetry is now available via a digital subscription for iPads and iPhones! Purchase here or learn more.

elainebleakney: Helen Frankenthaler. Post Card for James...

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:18:52 -0500

elainebleakney:

Helen Frankenthaler. Post Card for James Schuyler. 1962-65-67. Not currently on view.

berfrois: Paul Verlaine drinking absinthe, Paris,...

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:14:51 -0500

berfrois:

Paul Verlaine drinking absinthe, Paris, 1892

Photograph by Dornac

slantedshanty: Cid Corman

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:51:58 -0500

slantedshanty:

Cid Corman

Rejection can be such a drag, Dad.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:51:00 -0500

Rejection can be such a drag, Dad.

Photograph by David Pursehouse

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:14:43 -0500

Photograph by David Pursehouse

Tyler Adam Smith is designing 100 books that should be written.

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:30:02 -0500

Tyler Adam Smith is designing 100 books that should be written.

uwlittlemags: FROM THE VAULT… Palms: a magazine of...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:17:23 -0500

uwlittlemags:

FROM THE VAULT…

Palms: a magazine of poetry, published from 1923-1940, is a title in the Little Magazine Collection with an interesting history.

Edited and published in Guadalajara, Mexico, by Idella Purnell until 1930 and by her husband after that, Palms announced in its third issue that it would begin publishing poems anonymously, withholding the names of the poets in the next issue. (Contemporary publishers, take note— that’s certainly one way to keep your readers buying your magazine!)

Over the years, Palms published poems by, among others, Langston Hughes, Helen Hoyt, W.E.B. DuBois, Arna Bontemps, and D.H. Lawrence, the latter of which appears to have caused a minor scuffle between Palms and Poetry— take a look at this note (Vol. 1, No. 4), pictured above, that reads:

NOSTALGIA is one of several poems which Mr. Lawrence in good faith gave to the editors of Palms. He had either forgotten its appearance in POETRY several years ago, or considered our version of it a different poem. We offer our innocent apologies to the editors of POETRY.

Well, those were the days before writers could keep track of their submissions through Duotrope and Microsoft Excel…

Another highlight is associate editor Witter Bynner’s editorial “Ten Commandments for Poets” (Vol. 1 No. 4), pictured in full above, which begins with the advice, “Don’t be a poet, or marry, or use adjectives, as long as you can help it,” and goes on to suggest, “Don’t let poets who prefer to be monkeys deter you from being a person.”

Being based in Mexico meant that Palms was subject to different political circumstances than its contemporaries in the United States. A note in the first issue of 1924 (Vol. 1 No. 6) explains to readers that “disturbed political conditions” in Guadalajara caused a publication delay, and an editorial in the same issue, titled “Isolation,” further explains an insurgency of 1923 that cut off Guadalajara from the outside world for three months. With forces confiscating printing presses in the city due to suspicions that publications were serving political rebels, Palms saved its own printers just in time, but scattered them in homes across the city, thus complicating and delaying the printing of the issue.

Another noteworthy number of the magazine came in 1926, when Palms devoted an issue (Vol. 4, No. 1) to publishing the work of seventeen African-American authors of the Harlem Renaissance. The issue included an essay by Walter White on the development of African-American poetry, and a favorable review by Alain Locke of Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues.

So who was Idella Purnell? Born in Guadalajara and raised by her father, an American dentist, she attended college at UC-Berkeley. Upon graduation, she returned to Guadalajara and decided to start a literary magazine. She had taken a creative writing course at Berkeley from Witter Bynner, who then agreed to mentor Purnell on the editing and publication of Palms. In addition to publishing Palms, Purnell also— at various points— served as head of the foreign book department for the Los Angeles Public Library, opened a gold mine in Mexico, was a riveter for Douglas Aviation and Fletcher Aviation during World War II, and directed a Scientology center in Pasadena, California. She died in 1982.

Here in the Little Magazine Collection, we have an original of the first-ever issue of Palms (Vol. 1, No. 1), along with a Kraus Reprint of Volumes 1-3, spanning the years of 1923-26. If you’d like further reading on the magazine and its editor, here are some places to begin:

Idella Purnell papers at Ransom Center, UT-Austin

Palms in the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Vol. 2

Palms in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Vol. II

Sophie Cabot Black.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:36:26 -0500

Sophie Cabot Black.

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Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:56:22 -0500

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Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:28:35 -0500

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Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:08:11 -0500