New Pages offers an opinion piece written by the late Jessica Powers, author and Carmelite Sister, on why libraries should stock more literary magazines. In that libraries today are forced to keep their collections to those most likely to be utilized by their community, they sometimes fail to provide that community with the work of up and coming writers before they become authors of full-length books.
Another problem is the often transient nature of such magazines…after a few issues, many are gone never to reappear. Her article recommends nevertheless that they are worth the effort to seek out and to collect. Fellow Wisconsin poet Tom Montag is quoted as saying “Little magazines are essential to contemporary literature; the librarian who ignores them betrays that literature.”
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