Proliferation
Literary journal published quasi-annually from 1994 through 1999
About
Proliferation was a journal of new writing co-edited by Mary Burger, Jay Schwartz, and Chris Vitiello, launched when they met as MFA students in Naropa’s Creating Writing and Poetics program in Boulder, Colorado. Amidst the breadth and diversity of innovative writing proliferating then, the journal’s aim was to capture a slice of that creative moment. Covers were letterpress printed.
Praise
To begin with, Proliferation 2 is beautifully put together, comprised of both letterpress and offset printing on multiple stock and found papers (such as a dictionary). The result is splendiferously palimpsestic — and yet, this playful presentation doesn’t interfere with the presentation of the writing and the artwork within. The writers represented in the magazine display an extremely diverse and eclectic grouping, with some of the most interesting writing being by writers whom this editor at least had not seen in print before. The result is in the tradition of printer-poets such as Lyn Hejinian or Rosmarie Waldrop, or the Michalowskis in Michigan (just to name a few) who have been led to the act of “setting type” in warm-hearted Bakhtinian gush: a magazine of weight and consistency.
—Small Press Collective
