Comment in Motion, No. 4 (November 1967)

Open this November 1967 issue of Comment in Motion and the contents begin making their own introductions. It contains 11 named pieces or sections, beginning with Foreword, After the Festivities or The Evening of the Day of the Fiesta by Giacomo Leopardi, and The Lake by Alphonse de Lamartine. 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.

This number makes Friedrich Hölderlin the center of its experiment, carrying 4 poems—from Diotima to Des Morgens—into Grover Jacoby’s fluctuant syllabic measure. Translations of Rosalía Castro, Alphonse de Lamartine, Giacomo Leopardi broaden the comparison, so the issue reads as a set of practical tests rather than a single showcase. Foreword supplies the turning point, explaining what the verse itself is trying to preserve: movement, stress, and rhetorical force across languages. The result is both a small anthology and a compact demonstration of translation as an argument about poetic time.

The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, From “En las Orillas del Sar” — 70 by Rosalía Castro changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Des Morgens by Friedrich Hölderlin. 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 Giacomo Leopardi, Alphonse de Lamartine, Louise Labé, Rosalía Castro, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Grover Jacoby. 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, Poetry translation, Comparative poetics, and Fluctuant syllabic verse—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 Foreword, turn next to From “En las Orillas del Sar” — 70 by Rosalía Castro, and finish with Des Morgens by Friedrich Hölderlin. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 15 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 23 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.