Temblor, No. 4 (1986)

The 1986 issue of Temblor brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 24 named pieces or sections, beginning with Road, Roadsides and the Disparate Frames of Sequence by Gustaf Sobin, City of Men by Aaron Shurin, and Delay series: The Series as Qualitative Infinity by Leslie Scalapino. 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.

Road, Roadsides and the Disparate Frames of Sequence by Gustaf Sobin sets the first measure of the issue. From there, City of Men and Delay series: The Series as Qualitative Infinity widen its range of voices and approaches. The fiction supplies a narrative counterweight to the poems and criticism, giving the issue a shape as well as a roster. Long projects are the governing unit: 9 poems from The Person 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, Canto Diurno by Pierre Joris changes the view; the closing stretch reaches from The Field & Garden of Circe by Jed Rasula. 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 Gustaf Sobin, Aaron Shurin, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Steve McCaffery, Bob Perelman, and Bruce Andrews, along with 16 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, Little magazines, and Death and elegy—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 Road, Roadsides and the Disparate Frames of Sequence by Gustaf Sobin, turn next to Canto Diurno by Pierre Joris, and finish with from The Field & Garden of Circe by Jed Rasula. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 87 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 170 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.