Variegation, Vol. III, No. 3 (Summer 1948)

The Summer 1948 issue of Variegation brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 15 named pieces or sections, beginning with Standing In Dusk by Muriel Spark, Swan’s Feather by Snow Longley Housh, and The Wind Blows Over by Howard Sergeant. 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.

Lawrence P. Spingarn’s 3-poem run, from Claustrophobe to The Climate Within, gives this issue its clearest formal center. Most of the 15 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, Standing In Dusk and Maker of Garlands 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, Small Architects by Joseph Joel Keith changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Maker of Garlands by Ursula Stuart Laird. 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 Muriel Spark, Snow Longley Housh, Howard Sergeant, Lawrence P. Spingarn, Nina Willis Walter, Joseph Joel Keith, Hanson Kellogg, and Mary Moon, along with 2 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 War and peace—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 Standing In Dusk by Muriel Spark, turn next to Small Architects by Joseph Joel Keith, and finish with Maker of Garlands by Ursula Stuart Laird. 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.