Letter from the Editors: Thirty Years
Christopher Bernard
It turns out we've always been an anti-capitalist project. One would think we'd sought deliberately to create a thing that has no market value whatsoever, just to cock a snook at the barbarians of the marketplace. And at that we seem to have succeeded, a little alarmingly.
But then, poetry, which, in the broadest sense of the term, we have tried to make the backbone of the magazine; in a sense, its ultimate justification; has no—really never has had, except perhaps, for a brief, bright, beautiful, illusory (and is there any better definition of “poetic”?) moment, between the boyhood successes of Lord Byron and the forlorn death of Pushkin in the Russian snows—“significant market value” in generations of capitalist culture.
A case can be made that poetry is both anti-capitalist and anti-democratic (pace Whitman): a communication within society, and across generations, between some of the most responsive (if not always most effectual) types of intellect and humanity, using some of the least commodifiable of substances: the language of authenticity. On cheap paper. It is not likely that anyone will ever be able to make a great deal of money from that.
In November 2019, we, defying the odds of having made no money in all this time, will nevertheless celebrate thirty years of continuous publication.
I was at the founding. I am ultimately responsible for the idea behind the magazine, for its name, and, partly, for the initial gathering of personalities who drove the publication’s first years. So, if you are looking for someone to blame, look no further. The father and mother of modern neoliberal capitalism (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) are no longer with us; neoliberalism is in the midst of committing suicide and of destroying life on earth (we will see which eventuality happens first), but we are still here, singing for all we are worth.
We even have our own creation story, which I have never before given in complete detail. So here goes.
A number of reasons drove me to found this publication . . . but let me back up for a moment.
In my childhood I was an ardent patriot of America and a faithful Christian, growing up, as I did, in the spacious and luminous, Methodist and conservative, farm country of eastern Pennsylvania. When I was ten, my family moved to Guadalajara, in Mexico, where my father hoped to complete a novel. In that almost intimidatingly foreign land (it was my first experience of urban life as well as of an existentially different society), I discovered two things: first, that there was a way of life, indeed there were a myriad ways of life, almost inconceivably different from anything I had known.
Second, I discovered the existence of that peculiarly repulsive thing, “the ugly American”: presumptuous, self-satisfied, patronizing and contemptuous of other cultures, socially, politically and culturally insensitive; often merely ridiculous, but even then troubling. I had a brief glimpse of the darkness that resides inside our metallic radiance.
I brought these discoveries back home to the States with me, and always having been a lover of solitude, I found myself brooding on them with almost unhealthy obsessiveness.
American popular, economic, and political cultures (though I was, of course, too young to think in such terms) seemed to me both intimately related and potentially disastrous. I had an uneasy feeling that “the American way of life” was leading to some sort of catastrophe, sleepwalking in a delirious parade of half-merited self-congratulation. My sense of coming danger was reinforced by two shocking discoveries I had already made in my early childhood: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the existence of the death camps of the Holocaust. These introduced me to a sense of the nearly infinite depth of human depravity and irrationality, even to be found in a triumphalist and self-adulating America; a sense that I have never since that time been able completely to shake.
I had become a great reader and was discovering the Russian writers of the nineteenth century, a discovery that made me increasingly suspicious of the cold war propaganda of the time. As part 3 of my self-education (not being sufficiently challenged by the books I was reading in school), I also read works by Freud, who taught me the constant self-deception practiced by the ego and, by implication, society at large; Aristotle and Epictetus on ethics, which began to loosen me from the sweet chokehold of Christianity; Plato on the “republic,” which taught me how all societies are based on “golden lies”; writings by Nietszche that taught me the intoxications (and dangers) of certain kinds of radical questioning; the existentialism of Sartre, which I found both fascinating, even intoxicating, and as wrong-headed as a pretentious bottle of brandy; and works by Marx and Engels, including the “Communist Manifesto” and selections from Capital; which did not turn me into a communist, but did make me suspicious of capitalism, which I began to see as the bleak heart under the American smile.
By my early twenties I also felt alienated from contemporary American literary culture. I was writing stories, poems, “novels,” wordy, would-be philosophical meditations in my diaries, and so on, as a means of “expressing myself,” of exploring my ideas about the world, myself, and the limits, and freedom, of language—but I had no desire to join any of the various literary schools and establishments I was aware of. The values I pursued and those expressed in the available outlets were so antithetical I felt little desire to appear in them; I certainly had no desire to wrestle with their editors and publishers. I began publishing theater and performance criticism in a local alternative newspaper in Philadelphia, where I spent most of my youth, and then book reviews, where I was free to air my skepticism thanks to a supportive editor, in the morning daily.
One day I came across a small xeroxed publication in a café across from an art school near where I lived. It was called, simply, FIVE and contained examples of literary and artistic work by (I assumed) students at the school. I was charmed—it was the first “literary and arts” publication with any appeal for me. Its production was unsophisticated, but there was a combination of wit, a certain rough elegance, yet also a genuineness and originality of tone that spoke to me. And immediately I knew I wanted to do something like that, somehow, someday.
Several years passed. I moved with an old school friend to San Francisco. One afternoon, I was sitting at the Café Clarion at the corner of Mission Street and Clarion Alley (since made famous for its murals), and paging through a copy of the Spanish-language literary review in newsprint, El Gato Tuerto, when I was reminded of FIVE. I daydreamed and doodled for the next half hour, trying out different titles for a possible magazine, until I came up with one that struck me: a Latin phrase meaning “Reader, beware!” . . . Its slightly cocky defiance appealed to me. It was just the tone I wanted to take toward a world I felt trapped in.
How would this imaginary magazine be produced, organized, funded? Hm. Perhaps this way: a handful of contributors would each be responsible for an independent section, with costs and responsibilities for production and distribution shared by all. How would we print it? Xerox and staple it. How would we distribute it? Sell it cheap . . . no, better yet: distribute it for free in bars, cafes, bookstores, libraries, student lounges, bus stops—wherever a counter met an elbow or a surface met an eye. Who would ever read it? People like us. People like me. A small number. But our own.
Well, that seemed doable. And I began to feel the thrill on the nerve endings of possibility.
The problem, of course, was finding other interested parties. This proved hardest of all, as I am not very gregarious; have never cultivated more than a small number of friends at a time. I was also aloof from the local literary scene.
One summer evening in 1989, an old theater friend and I were driving back from an event when the frustrations of dealing with literary groups, cliques, reviews, etc., came up, and I mentioned my ancient idea for a magazine. My friend immediately responded: he would contribute gladly, and mentioned friends he could ask; even offering a place for an initial meeting. I trusted his judgment and came up with one or two people who might be interested. A blur of phone calls and a few weeks later, five (!) of us met.
Four of the five—James Bybee, Gordon Phipps, Andrew Towne, and myself—agreed to join together to create a regular anthology of our work (writing, artwork, photography, musical scores—anything physically printable). I would do production and overall editorial and art direction. Our “zine” would be photocopied, stapled, distributed, free of charge, “guerrilla”-style. Each of us would be responsible for his part of the zine—no one having veto power, though we agreed we would allow no pornography, no “discrimination” of the invidious kind, no hatred (though uncompromising critiques of ideas would be encouraged), etc.—all of us being, I think it’s fair to say, “liberal,” if not necessarily “liberals.”
Financing would be shared: I argued, successfully, against applying for grants, following the dictum “who owns the purse owns the publication.” I have seen too many worthy organizations fail soon after they became dependent on grants. And I did not want to exchange independence of mind and constantly worry about “offending” the politically correct sensibilities (a notion all of us abominated) of many grant providers.
And we decided on a name: the old name I had dreamt up at the Café Clarion. We would call our publication Caveat Lector.
Two months later I had a complete set of material and began production on the first issue. (I have to admit: designing and producing these early issues, with the “arts-and-craftsy” elements of paper, scissors, and glue, was the most pleasure, most sheer fun, the magazine ever gave me. Who does actual paste-up anymore? The internet has made us trade pleasure for power—almost always an enormous mistake; pleasure being life’s only incontrovertible good and power the greatest of delusions.)
We met, went over the paste-up, arranged to take it to the printer the following Thursday, then went out for a celebratory round of beers at the Hemlock Tavern.
That Tuesday afternoon, an earthquake struck.
1989: Loma Prieta.
“Well,” I thought. “Somebody downstairs is taking us seriously. At any rate, we won’t be publishing this week.”
Next morning I scribbled a short poem then hiked through the shipwrecked Marina, where fires and landfill had left a neighborhood that looked like a doll’s village knocked down in a childish frenzy, photographed a crumpled cement driveway, and later pasted it to accompany my slim verse.
Days passed without electricity. Candles burned in the windows and a few restaurants that stayed open, and the darkened spires of Saints Peter and Paul loomed against the starry night like spectres from the middle ages, and the only information from outside the neighborhood was via word of mouth and battery-operated radios. The neighborhood atmosphere was strangely jolly: as if there’s nothing like a shared disaster to make people friendly with total strangers. If only we all realized that life itself is a shared disaster! It was noted at the time that for the week after the quake, there was a dramatic fall in the crime rate.
When power was finally restored, I pasted poem and photograph into the magazine and walked the paste-up to the printer, alone. And our first issue came out, roughly a week late. I like to think my little illustrated poem about the quake was the first to appear in a literary publication (the local newspapers otherwise forestalled me).
Cover of the first issue of Caveat Lector (October 1989)
Over the next several years we published three or four times a year. Some friends wanted to join in so we included them. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a notice from Poets Market, the yearly marketing guide for poets and would-be poets, asking whether we wanted to be included.
This, naturally, caused a crisis of identity—we would have to deal with work from total “outsiders” and would have to present ourselves with at least something like professionalism . . . would we have to say farewell to our “subversive goals”?
Well, maybe not!
The discussion was short; we agreed, enthusiastically. From then on, we were an official “magazine.” We began getting submissions from across the country, from Canada, from abroad; within a year we had become international.
Sometime in the mid-90s, James Bybee suggested a change of format, folding our basic 11”x9½” sheets longwise, creating the long, narrow format that soon became our trademark style.
Over the years the others moved on to different endeavors—moving out of the area in two cases—and new partners joined briefly. Ho Lin joined in the early 2000s, just before we launched a website (as a result of which we could expand to publish music, streaming audio of poetry, even films), and Ho continues with his brilliant fiction and webmastery to this day.
In 2005, I published my debut novel, A Spy in the Ruins, with Regent Press, and the publisher, Ho, and I decided to start an imprint graced with the magazine’s name, a list that will soon grow to more than a dozen titles, including Ho’s award-winning collection of short stories China Girl and Robert Balmanno’s dystopian tetralogy, Runes of Gaia.
A few years ago we went all-digital. A sad moment it was when we put the final print edition “to bed,” but it was no longer possible to do print production on top of other responsibilities. To be candid, preparing the print edition digitally, which had become imperative, was just not as much fun as the old, gluey, slightly messy, analog way.
Over these three decades we have published a remarkably broad array of poets, writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers, including Ivan Argüelles, Jack Foley, Joanne Lowery, Simon Perchik, Lyn Lifshin, David Starkey, Philip Fried, Donna Pucciani, Diane Webster, D. G. Zorich, Nara Denning, Rita Piffer, Yu Xinqiao, Vladimir Druk, Mary-Marcia Casoly, the late Les Murray, and early work by the winner of the 2017 Poet’s Prize–winning poet Ernest Hilbert.
And so, still anticapitalist to our bones, we have managed, in our peculiar way, to thrive following our own literary ethos, philosophy, aesthetics, and “values,” even in a culture that respects them grudgingly. We have created some 70 separate issues from our own labor, with our own financial resources, and with faith—in integrity, determination, and candor.
No publication with any history can be summed up briefly. However, if I had to give an overall description of our publication I would call it democratic (politically), socialist (economically), modernist-romantic (aesthetically), and conservative (environmentally conservationist). In other words, a gallimaufry of contradictions we try to patch over as elegantly as we are able to.
Speaking for myself, I do not accept the common designations “liberal,” “progressive,” etc.; when pressed, I state that I am a “social individualist.” This . . . nonmainstream tone may be seen throughout our many issues.
Read us at your peril. From whatever position you begin, you might find yourself changing your mind . . . about everything. Which is all we ask.
Caveat lector.
—Christopher Bernard
Christopher Bernard is the co-editor of Caveat Lector. His most recent book of poetry is Chien Lunatique (2017, Regent Press); his new novel, Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Café, will appear in 2020.
Image: "King's wine" by Nick in exsilio, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.