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These are Fighting Words
A poet's work is to name the unnameable,
to point at frauds, to take sides,
start arguments, shape the world,
and stop it going to sleep. – Salman Rushdie
Permit me rage – Donna Sharp from Big Hammer Volume 1 page 55
dedicated to those trying to avoid spiritual death (good luck) – Ken Greenley from Half Dozen of the Other Volume 1 page 1
In the small city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, about halfway between Walt Whitman’s birthplace in Huntington, Long Island and the place of his death in Camden, New Jersey a literary revolution was underway.
It was revolution the way Whitman would have loved it; fought with pen, paper, typewriter, personal computer, and photo copier. Like Whitman, a group of young New Jersey writers and activists were not going to wait for the establishment to catch up with or approve of their writing. Leaves of Grass was self-published. In advertisements for his first edition, he appealed to “lovers of literary curiosities” to buy his collection.
During the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, New Brunswick was ablaze with the spirit of Whitman, as well as the beats, be-bop, punk rock, and pretty much anything that flipped the bird to literature seen as well-crafted white bread comfort food published to act as Prozac for the masses. As a starting point, read Eliot Katz’s piece about a 1976 Allen Ginsberg reading at New Brunswick’s Rutgers University. Ginsberg acted as a mentor and patron to Katz, his co-founder of Long Shot Danny Shot and others in these pages like Andy Clausen. It was just the beginning of writers passing the encouragement they’d received from publishers and reading curators along to the next wave of writers and activists that found these pages and venues to be creative homes.
Along the way established writers like Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Barbara Holland, Antler and other would lend support and submissions and future literary stars like Pablo Medina, Blake Nelson, and others grace the pages of these zines.
New Brunswick was blessed with an off the commercial mainstream bar scene that embraced music and writing that wasn’t crafted for the pop charts or the best seller list. (Although the band The Smithereens and at least one writer in this collection found themselves there.)
to point at frauds, to take sides,
start arguments, shape the world,
and stop it going to sleep. – Salman Rushdie
Permit me rage – Donna Sharp from Big Hammer Volume 1 page 55
dedicated to those trying to avoid spiritual death (good luck) – Ken Greenley from Half Dozen of the Other Volume 1 page 1
In the small city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, about halfway between Walt Whitman’s birthplace in Huntington, Long Island and the place of his death in Camden, New Jersey a literary revolution was underway.
It was revolution the way Whitman would have loved it; fought with pen, paper, typewriter, personal computer, and photo copier. Like Whitman, a group of young New Jersey writers and activists were not going to wait for the establishment to catch up with or approve of their writing. Leaves of Grass was self-published. In advertisements for his first edition, he appealed to “lovers of literary curiosities” to buy his collection.
During the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, New Brunswick was ablaze with the spirit of Whitman, as well as the beats, be-bop, punk rock, and pretty much anything that flipped the bird to literature seen as well-crafted white bread comfort food published to act as Prozac for the masses. As a starting point, read Eliot Katz’s piece about a 1976 Allen Ginsberg reading at New Brunswick’s Rutgers University. Ginsberg acted as a mentor and patron to Katz, his co-founder of Long Shot Danny Shot and others in these pages like Andy Clausen. It was just the beginning of writers passing the encouragement they’d received from publishers and reading curators along to the next wave of writers and activists that found these pages and venues to be creative homes.
Along the way established writers like Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Barbara Holland, Antler and other would lend support and submissions and future literary stars like Pablo Medina, Blake Nelson, and others grace the pages of these zines.
New Brunswick was blessed with an off the commercial mainstream bar scene that embraced music and writing that wasn’t crafted for the pop charts or the best seller list. (Although the band The Smithereens and at least one writer in this collection found themselves there.)
No Joe, I’m not forgetting Elizabeth
OK, before Joe Weil curses me out, it wasn’t just happening in New Brunswick. It was alive in his city of Elizabeth that he so wonderfully honors in his “Ode to Elizabeth”. It was suburban Woodbridge where Edie Eustice created a venue where poets and writers local and traveling, beginning and expert could be heard and nurtured.
David Roskos, Joe Weil, Eliot Katz, Danny Shot, Ken Greenley, Tom Obrzut, Matt Borkowski, and Miriam Halliday-Borkowski were (and still are) infused with the spirit of Whitman, publishing themselves, one another, and anyone else who took no prisoners in their attempt, as Rushdie put it, to “shape the world and stop it going to sleep.” Inside this site you’ll see writing and art from their zines that is angry, political, beautiful, often profane, and more often moving. This is writing that celebrates the unloved, the unlovely, the unappreciated, and the unmentionable for all lovers of literary curiosities. Whitman would be proud.
David Roskos, Joe Weil, Eliot Katz, Danny Shot, Ken Greenley, Tom Obrzut, Matt Borkowski, and Miriam Halliday-Borkowski were (and still are) infused with the spirit of Whitman, publishing themselves, one another, and anyone else who took no prisoners in their attempt, as Rushdie put it, to “shape the world and stop it going to sleep.” Inside this site you’ll see writing and art from their zines that is angry, political, beautiful, often profane, and more often moving. This is writing that celebrates the unloved, the unlovely, the unappreciated, and the unmentionable for all lovers of literary curiosities. Whitman would be proud.
Site created by Tony Gruenewald for the Spring 2012 Digital Libraries class 17:610:553 at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
It is intended for educational purposes only.
Copyrights belong to the writers, artists, and editors who created the work.
It is intended for educational purposes only.
Copyrights belong to the writers, artists, and editors who created the work.