It's been a little while since we've heard from Jacket2's Reissues section, but they're back with a very exciting new collection of materials related to O Books to share with eager readers. We'll let Reissues editor Danny Snelson make the announcment himself:
Breaking with standard Reissues format, this release celebrates an extraordinary set of editorial projects by a single editor over three related initiatives. Spanning twenty-one years from 1988 until 2009, Leslie Scalapino produced four O Books Anthologies, a single-issue magazine coedited with Rick London called enough, and a four-issue run of a magazine called War and Peace (coedited with Judith Goldman for issues 2–4). From O/One: An Anthology's focus on "writing that questions and transgresses genre lines between forms of poetic and critical discourse" to the final issue of War and Peace, Scalapino's editorial project continuously blurs categorical lines while challenging dominant discourses in both politics and poetics. Each collection gathers what Bernadette Mayer might call a "plural dream of social life."
"Each publication takes a particular focus or theme as its organizing principle," he continues. "Tracking these publications, an editorial through-line emerges: a focused bead on poetry's capacity to speak to the politics of the present. War is ever-present in these pages. From the Gulf War to the post-9/11 global war that continues to this day, the on-the-ground responses of poets in these collections presciently address our ongoing situation." "Proper names may have changed," he concludes, "but the news stays new. To read these pages is to see differently. As Scalapino contends in enough: 'Seeing what's happening is a form of change.'"
You'll find the O Books archives in Jacket2's Reissues section, alongside M/E/A/N/I/N/G, Chain, Secession, Alcheringa, Combo, Zuk, Roof, New Wilderness Letter, Reality Studios, Infolio, Big Allis, Aufgabe, and Calque. Click here to start browsing.
