December

December marks the final issue of 1923 , which of course brought to mind the sense of endings. The cover is a literal approach, taken from the November, 1923 issue of the horror fiction pulp magazine, Weird Tales. The body of the zine is something else entirely: a selection of poems from Body of This Death, the first collection of poetry by Louise Bogan.

Bogan achieved fame as a poet and as the poetry critic for the New Yorker, a role she served in for 38 years. She died almost exactly fifty years ago to the day. The day after her death, the New York Times ran a long obituary, which featured this quote I found inspiring:

It's silly to suggest the writing of poetry as something ethereal, a sort of soul‐crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy idea about poetry. It's not like embroidery or painting or silk. It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's some thing you have to work hard at.

Body of This Death was considered a "major work," and poems from this collection were included in many of the collections that followed. For this zine, I've selected a handful of the poems, and rearranged their order.

The music in the center is from an Irving Berlin composition, Waltz of Long Ago.