Introduction: A Brief Analysis of Mother

      The increased use of the mimeograph machine by writers in the 1960s paved the way for the production of new Little Magazines in an era known as the Mimeograph Revolution. A mimeograph allowed an author to type what they wished to produce on a stencil that could then be used to produce multiple copies of the same work. Once enough individual works were compiled, they were put together to create issues of Little Magazines that could be distributed wherever, whenever. Using this technology allowed writers and artists to publish their work outside the confines of established editors and publishers, which encouraged artistic liberty. These are the more obvious facts of this era, but the finer details of the influence of these magazines, the inspirations behind them, and their purpose have yet to be completely recognized. As Alan Golding writes in From Outlaw to Classic, “Closer attention to those magazines would force us to see literary history not only as a history of individual careers, important books, and competing discourses but also as a history of writing communities.” Poet Peter Schjeldahl, one of the co-editors of the Little Magazine Mother, acknowledges this mass sharing of experimental literature as a form of building communities.

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       Influenced by the Mimeograph Revolution, though not produced by a mimeograph, Schjeldahl helped curate Mother, a Little Magazine intended to be thought-provoking and distinctive; an undertaking of new literature. Discussed in a later interview in 1988, Schjeldahl revealed that the curation of Mother began “when I dropped out of college I worked my way east as a newspaper reporter, and I was a poet and became part of the New York poetry scene, and published a literary magazine called Mother. And that time, the mid ’60s, was the last high point for poetry. Poetry went into the toilet in the late ’60s. But you know at the time when poetry was dead, painting was dead too. Painting revived; poetry is still there.” In his interview with Lee Harwood in 1966, Schjeldahl describes a wide range of knowledge on fellow young poets due to his familiarity with so many Little Magazines, claiming that “all of literature is now available” in avant-garde mediums like the Little Magazines. Without the dismantlement of the confines of large publishers that disallow more provocative or experimental works, the themes that arise in poetry at this time might not have been possible. 

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      In this analysis of Mother and a few supplementary sources, questions about the magazine’s purpose, making, and influence will be answered as well as they can, based on the materials gathered. Mother has a majority male contributor demographic, ironic due to the title, and studying the works included by the male contributors gives insight into the value, or lack thereof, of women poets and artists. Despite the platform the Mimeograph Revolution gives to less represented writers, our project on Mother shows that the suppression of such contributors continues to be prominent.