"C" Magazine
Origin and Influences
Begun in May 1963 by Ted Berrigan, the “C” press printed a magazine of mimeograph-produced poems, plays, essays, translations, and comics. Its early contributors were the core group of second-generation New York School artists: Ted Berrigan, Dick Gallup, Ron Padgett, and Joe Brainard. Gallup, Padgett, and Brainard founded the ideological precursor to all second-generation New York School little magazines, called the White Dove Review, in high-school. Padgett recalls seeing other poetry magazines such as Leroi Jones’s Yugen and realizing “they were just little things stapled together.”(2) This realization spawned the creation of his own magazine.
Later, at Columbia University, Padgett edited a magazine called The Columbia Review. As Berrigan describes in Some Notes on “C”, Ron “in general disgust over the insipidity of the review” convinced his fellow editors to include poems by Berrigan and Dave Bearden.(1) The Dean's Office at Columbia demanded they remove these poems. It wasn’t until a student action group called ACTION mimeographed a couple hundred copies and sold them to the student body that the issue was distributed.(2)
Like “C” magazine, The Censored Review was printed on a set of legal-side mimeograph sheets in a stapled binding.(2) This barebones aesthetic contrasted with the more elegant Locus Solos poetry magazine. Locus Solos featured poets Berrigan admired, such as Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, James Schulyer, Frank O’ Hara. He describes Locus Solos as the only poetry magazine he “really had any respect for.”(1) When Locus Solos folded, Berrigan recognized the opportunity to publish his own and other Avant-garde and "experimental" poetry. Drawing from Locus Solos’s blueprint, as editor of “C” magazine Berrigan prided himself in “publishing things that no one else would publish.”(1) His willingness to validate artists outside of the mainstream represented an extension of Locus Solos’s artistic lineage and his own rebelliousness.
The Censored Review (1963).
Aesthetic and Materiality
The mimeograph defined the art as much as the art defined the capacity of the mimeograph; the size of the mimeograph paper influenced how artists arranged words on the page; it challenged artists to reconsider the process of creation; and the way ink bled through the mimeographed pages reflected the “quick-and-dirty” aesthetic of “C.” Printed on legal-side mimeograph sheets and bound only with staples, “C” magazine was decidedly spartan in its aesthetic choices.(4)
As Berrigan relates in an interview on WNYC, much to his interviewer and fellow poet’s surprise, it only cost him seventy-five dollars to produce an issue of “C.” Berrigan typed all the stencils and ran all the sheets on the mimeograph himself too, imparting a deep sense that “C” was his personal creation.(4) As he writes in “Some Notes about “C”,” “I intended and intend for “C” to exist as a personal aesthetic statement by me.”(1)
At first, Berrigan considered leaving “a lot of empty space on each page surrounding the poems.” Later however, Allan Ginsberg told him to “put thousands of poems on every page.”(4) The mimeograph certainly facilitated Berrigan’s ability to push massive bodies of poetry, and it helped him accomplish his purpose of “publishing things that no one else would publish.”(1) Berrigan showcased Avant-garde art in “C” magazine because he believed it wouldn’t get published elsewhere, offering a necessary platform for “experimental” art. In fact, the name of Berrigan’s magazine drew its inspiration from the father of “anti-art”: “I wanted a name without connotations and so, while thinking about Marcel Duchamp, one day said to myself, "A" "B" "C" "Voila!" and there it was ("C" "SHE" SEA" "C# #(ad infinitum))."(1) “C,” the name and the magazine, resisted categorization, allowing artists the freedom to be creative.
As Berrigan happily points out in “Some Notes about “C”,” “C” magazine was the first poetry magazine to publish a homophonic translation: “Padgett and I hit on something very important in this phonetic and mistranslation business.” (1) Ultimately, Padgett and Berrigan’s energetic collaborations were the wellspring for other New York School little magazines, namely Lines, Elephant, and most notably Art & Literature.
New York School Qualities
The composition of “C” magazine and the production of New York School art were intimately interwoven. In 1964, “C” press published The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan and In Advance of the Broken Arm by Ron Padgett. Berrigan often published poems from The Sonnets in "C" and invited fellow New York School artists to provide cover art.(2) When considering the aesthetic of his magazine and the influence of the cover on the user’s experience of it, Berrigan writes “the idea was for every cover to be different, to utilize inexperience to produce"happenings."”(1)
His language evokes classic descriptions of the New York School; new magazine covers created unique resonances that complimented the body of poetry to produce “unexpected harmonies.”(3) Berrigan similarly built his poetry in The Sonnets, deconstructing older poems and rearranging lines to produce these “unexpected harmonies.” He also constructed the first three issues of “C” magazine: “the first three issues of “C” are special to me, since I put them together almost the way I put a poem together.”(1) This parallel idea of composition at a micro- and macro-scale captures a wonderful simultaneity of “C”.
To see the table of contents for all issues of "C" magazine, follow the webpage below!
Citations
- Berrigan, Ted. “Some Notes about “C”.” Ted Berrigan Papers. New York: N.p. May 1964.
- Clay, Steven, and Rodney Phillips. A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980. Granary Books, 1998.
- Quilter, Jenni, et al. New York School Painters & Poets. Rizzoli, 2014.
- “Reel 8: Ted Berrigan.” Poetry of the Avant-Garde. The NYPR Archive Collections. WNYC, New York. 1 Jan. 1966. Radio.