Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
Although George Hitchcock is a minor figure in American literary history, he is one of its most genuinely unique characters and played a vital role in shaping American poetic surrealism. Largely because of Hitchcock’s efforts, Kayak, which ran from 1964-1984 under his editorship, became for many poets the prototype of the small press magazine. Joseph Bednarik writes that “[t]aken in its proper historical perspective, kayak was the vanguard of modern independent presses and George Hitchcock a most daring and perceptive editor” (28). It gathered poets, Philip Levine writes, who were “wild enough to be truly American” but were “underground” because American poetry’s “official organs . . . were too sterile to allow them life anywhere else” (xiv).
Recommended Citation
Lampe, Brooks, "“The gold snake / coiled in the sun”: George Hitchcock and Kayak Magazine" (2015). Faculty Publications - Department of English. 141.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/eng_fac/141
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons
Comments
Lampe, B., (2015) ““The gold snake / coiled in the sun”: George Hitchcock and Kayak Magazine”, Dada/Surrealism 20(1), 1-21. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1264