Comment in Motion, No. 6 (October 1968)

The October 1968 issue of Comment in Motion brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 35 named pieces or sections, beginning with Reactions to Fluctuant Syllabic Verse and Comment in Motion, Foreword, and The First Poem Appearing in the “Vita Nuova” by Dante Alighieri. 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 7 poems—from To our Great Poets to Return to the Homeland—into Grover Jacoby’s fluctuant syllabic measure. Translations of Charles Baudelaire, Heinrich Heine, Michelangelo Buonarroti broaden the comparison, so the issue reads as a set of practical tests rather than a single showcase. Reactions to Fluctuant Syllabic Verse and Comment in Motion 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, Correspondences by Charles Baudelaire changes the view; the closing stretch reaches From “Lyrisches Intermezzo” by Heinrich Heine. 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 Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Gaspara Stampa, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean de La Fontaine, Gérard de Nerval, and Charles Baudelaire, along with 7 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, 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 Reactions to Fluctuant Syllabic Verse and Comment in Motion, turn next to Correspondences by Charles Baudelaire, and finish with From “Lyrisches Intermezzo” by Heinrich Heine. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 26 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 48 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.