Variegation, Vol. III, No. 1 (Winter 1948)

Open this Winter 1948 issue of Variegation and the contents begin making their own introductions. It contains 16 named pieces or sections, beginning with Summer’s End by Marcia Masters Jennings, Fog at Night by Frank Bernard, and Night Storm by Frank Bernard. 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.

Frank Bernard’s 3-poem run, from Fog at Night to Emporium, gives this issue its clearest formal center. Most of the 16 poems are compact, but their free-verse lines vary the pace through clipped statements, longer syntactic runs, and small sequences that let one voice change pressure across several pages. 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, Summer’s End and Los Angeles Dusk 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, Fist of the Storm by Joseph Joel Keith changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Los Angeles Dusk by Helen Curry. 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 Marcia Masters Jennings, Frank Bernard, Marietta Thompson Sprague, Fanny Montague Hunt, Lucille Evans, Lionel Monteith, Joseph Joel Keith, and Daniel Smythe, along with 4 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, Free verse, Modernist poetry, and Los Angeles—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 Summer’s End by Marcia Masters Jennings, turn next to Fist of the Storm by Joseph Joel Keith, and finish with Los Angeles Dusk by Helen Curry. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 28 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 17 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.