Recurrence, Vol. VI, No. 23 (Winter 1956)

Open this Winter 1956 issue of Recurrence and the contents begin making their own introductions. It contains 14 named pieces or sections, beginning with The Crying of the Grass by Leah Bodine Drake, The Dark and the Music by Hanson Kellogg, and Amadeus in the Anteroom by John Theobald. That opening offers a direct path through the issue, but it is not the only one. A reader can follow the printed order, pause over a familiar contributor, or start with a title that catches the eye. No special background is needed. The magazine explains itself gradually through the choices it makes and through the company each piece keeps.

Eleanor Glenn Wallis’s 3-poem run, from Whooping Cranes to The Hunter, gives this issue its clearest formal center. Across 13 poems, rhyme often serves as a way of tightening turns of thought: brief lyrics sit beside longer stanzaic arguments, while the sequence of titles keeps the pacing exact. What stands out is those changes of scale, as a single image is often answered by a more extended poem on the next leaf. Around that sequence, The Crying of the Grass and Lost and Found widen the issue’s range without breaking its measured, poem-by-poem concentration.

The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Stillness and Turbulence by Joseph Joel Keith changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Contributors. The works differ in length, subject, and manner, yet their placement creates connections that a simple list of names cannot show. The pleasure comes from those changes. A short piece can clear the air after a longer one, a new voice can redirect the mood, and an unexpected title can make an earlier page look different when the reader thinks back to it.

The contributor list includes Leah Bodine Drake, Hanson Kellogg, John Theobald, W. R. Johnson, Gertrude Claytor, Sara King Carleton, Marcia Masters, and Joseph Joel Keith, along with 2 additional contributors. Some readers will arrive looking for a particular name; others will meet these contributors here for the first time. Either approach works. The publication details add useful context: the issue was edited by Grover Jacoby, published by Variegation Publishing Company, and issued from Los Angeles, California. A journal is also a made object, assembled by people deciding what to print, how to order it, and which voices should share a number. Reading from beginning to end lets those choices appear naturally.

The catalog subjects—Los Angeles little magazines, American poetry, Rhyme, and Formalist poetry—are useful starting points, especially for searching, but they do not set limits on what a reader may find. For a first visit, begin with The Crying of the Grass by Leah Bodine Drake, turn next to Stillness and Turbulence by Joseph Joel Keith, and finish with Contributors. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 13 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 18 pages. It keeps the contents in a stable, legible form and makes names and titles easier to find. A source facsimile remains part of the project’s private editorial record, but it is not included in the public upload. What appears here is the reading copy: a practical way to spend time with the issue and discover which pieces invite a return.