OR (Magazine) (USA) 2008-2014

OR (Magazine) (Los Angeles, USA) 2008-2014

Edited by director of the MFA Writing Program at Otis College of Literature + Art, OR magazine succeeded that program’s publication, The New Review of Literature, when the journal lost its US distribution. Or, in a far less expensive, newspaper-like format, was printed and shipped out to authors and university and college locations free of charge. Yet, its exciting graphic presentations, along with its wide mix of international and US poets, fiction writers, essayists and reviewers, was perhaps even more dynamic than the previous Otis journal, recalling, in fact, Vangelisti’s early Los Angeles journal, Invisible City.

     It would be hard to list all of its major contributors, but a selective list includes: Adonis, Amiri Baraka, Jorge Amado, Luigi Ballerini, Paul Vangelisti, a related symposium on the Italian poet Adriano Spatola, Nick Piombino, Marco Giovenale, Dennis Phillips, Mohammed Dib, Ko Un, Nathaniel Tarn, Mark DuCharme, Antonio Delfini, Martha Ronk, Douglas Messerli, Standard Schaefer, Guy Bennett, Giovanna Sandri, Frederic Tuten, Rainer Kunze, Brian Blanchfeld, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Vivaldi, Giorgio Caproni, Ken McCullough, F. T. Marinetti, Raymond Queneau, Elizabeth Robinson, John Latta, Mac Wellman, Sarah Suzor, Gianluca Rizzo, Bob Crosson, Ernst Jandl, Terence Winch, John Kinsella, Neeli Cherkovski, Gilad Elbom, Tomas Tranströmer, Nanni Cagnone, Vincente Aleixandre, Béatrice Musli, Bill Mohr, Francis Jammes, Laura Mullen, Barbara Maloutas, Amy Allara, Dale Herd, Antonio Porta, Corrado Costa, Alain Freixe, Nanni Balestrini, Marjorie Welish, Stephen Kessler, Giulio Marzioli, Zbiegniew Herbert, Emilio Villa, and artists such as Michael C. McMillen, Courtney Gregg, Giuliano Della Casa, William Xerra and others.

     As with The New Review of Literature, OR represents many of the Otis faculty and their interests, especially the Italian connections between Vangelisti, Bennett, and others. But the eclectic listing above also reveals the journal’s interest in writers from across a wide spectrum of the modernist and contemporary literary scene.

     The typesetting and design for these issues was done by Rebecca Chamlee, who also worked on several Green Integer books. The editors-at-large include Luigi Ballerini, Guy Bennett, Beppe Cavatorta, Ray Di Palma, Marco Gioveale, Douglas Messerli, Gianluca Rizzo, and Standard Schaefer.

       The journal lasted for 12 issues, from 2008-2014.

—Douglas Messerli