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| Origin (magazine) | |
|---|---|
| Title | Origin |
| Founder | Cid Corman |
| Firstdate | 1951 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Based | Boston, Massachusetts |
Origin (magazine) was an American literary periodical founded in 1951 by Cid Corman. It became influential in mid‑20th‑century poetry and poetics circles, publishing experimental and avant‑garde work alongside translations and criticism. The magazine connected poets, translators, and scholars across networks associated with modernism, postwar American poetry, and international avant‑gardes.
Origin was established in 1951 in Boston, Massachusetts by Cid Corman, emerging amid postwar literary shifts that included figures from the Harvard University scene, the Black Mountain College milieu, and expatriate communities in Paris and Tokyo. Early issues featured work resonant with movements linked to T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the later trajectories of William Carlos Williams, situating Origin within dialogues involving New Criticism, Objectivist poets, and practitioners associated with Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. During the 1950s and 1960s the magazine fostered transatlantic and transpacific exchanges, publishing translations of poets connected to Yukio Mishima, Kōbō Abe, and other figures tied to postwar Japanese letters. The editorial practices reflected networks overlapping with Black Mountain College, the San Francisco Renaissance, and pockets of activity around Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley.
Origin's editorial mission emphasized innovation in lyric and long‑form poetics, seeking work by practitioners associated with William Bronk, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and poets influenced by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Content mixed original poetry, English translations of Matsuo Bashō and modern Japanese poets, essays on poetics echoing conversations with Charles Olson and Ted Hughes, and critical pieces that dialogued with scholarship from institutions such as Yale University and Columbia University. The magazine published manifestos and aesthetic statements resonant with debates involving John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, and Frank O’Hara, while also presenting work tied to European avant‑gardes like Paul Celan, Salvatore Quasimodo, and Eugenio Montale. Origin prioritized collaborations with translators and scholars connected to Princeton University and Oxford University translation studies.
Origin featured contributions from a wide range of poets, translators, and critics including Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Lorine Niedecker, William Carlos Williams, Paul Blackburn, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, William Bronk, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Ted Hughes, Paul Celan, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Muriel Rukeyser, Marie Ponsot, Yukio Mishima, Kōbō Abe, Matsuo Bashō, Basho scholars, E. E. Cummings, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Robert Bly, Denise Levertov, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Salvatore Quasimodo, Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Réda, Paul Valéry, W. S. Merwin, Nicholson Baker, Anthony Hecht, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Octavio Paz translators, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, R. S. Thomas, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert. Notable published items included early appearances, translations, and essays that later became central to studies of postwar poetics and the international modernist canon.
Literary historians and critics at institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Princeton University have examined Origin's role in shaping mid‑century poetic formations. The magazine influenced anthologies and movements tied to Black Mountain College, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the broader American avant‑garde, intersecting with figures from The New York School and the Beat Generation. Reception varied: some reviewers in journals affiliated with Oxford University and Cambridge University praised its rigor and breadth, while others aligned with mainstream reviews associated with The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review critiqued its avant‑garde orientation. Origin's internationalist editorial choices affected translation studies and comparative literature programs at University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley.
Origin ran in multiple series across decades, with print runs and editorial shifts producing distinct numbered series often referenced in bibliographies at Library of Congress and university special collections including Harvard University Library and Smith College. Editions varied between small press pamphlet formats and more substantial journal issues; some special numbers focused on single authors or national literatures, paralleling special issues in journals like Poetry (magazine), The Kenyon Review, and The Paris Review. Later revivals and collected volumes brought out by academic presses and small independent presses echoed practices at Wesleyan University Press and University of California Press.
While literary magazines are seldom direct recipients of major awards, contributors to Origin won numerous honors linked to the magazine’s pages, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Booker Prize, and fellowships from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. The magazine’s influence is cited in award citations and academic commemorations at Yale University, Harvard University, and Princeton University.
Category:American literary magazines Category:Poetry magazines published in the United States