Temblor, No. 7 (1988)

Open this 1988 issue of Temblor and the contents begin making their own introductions. It contains 23 named pieces or sections, beginning with 8th Merzgedicht in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters by Jackson Mac Low, from Khurban by Jerome Rothenberg, and from Captive Audience by Bob Perelman. 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.

Temblor ran to ten issues between 1985 and 1989, edited by Leland Hickman from an apartment on Cahuenga Boulevard in North Hollywood. This is the seventh, published in 1988: twenty-four contents entries over 180 pages, opening with Jackson Mac Low’s memorial for Kurt Schwitters and closing with David Chaloner. Long projects are the governing unit: Six Computergraphics and the other excerpts or poem groups let serial form, accumulation, and return displace the self-contained magazine lyric. Taken together, the issue offers a cross-section of ongoing experimental practices—poetry, prose, translation, and performance sharing space without being reduced to a single school.

The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Sophist & Sentence: Charles Bernstein & Ron by George Hartley changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Tongues of Light by David Chaloner. 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 Jackson Mac Low, Jerome Rothenberg, Bob Perelman, Paul Christensen, Gustaf Sobin, Gerald Burns, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Joseph Simas, along with 13 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 Leland Hickman, published by Temblor, and issued from North Hollywood, 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—Postwar American poetry, Experimental writing, Poetry in translation, and Little magazines—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 8th Merzgedicht in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters by Jackson Mac Low, turn next to Sophist & Sentence: Charles Bernstein & Ron by George Hartley, and finish with Tongues of Light by David Chaloner. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 93 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 261 PDF 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.