For anyone thinking about starting a lit mag, Cuddihy's memoir strikes me
as possibly very helpful. If I remember correctly, it's entitled _Call it
Ironwood_, and it's an issue-by-issue account of the magazin's history. If
you ever see the whole run of the thing (30+ issues), you'll first be
amazed by the range of poets he and Mary published.
The memoir is hard enough to find in the U.S., and may be
impossible to track down elsewhere, but it's worth looking for.
My first sentence implies that this is a how-to book: it's not. It
would be more accurate to say it's an (auto)biography of a great poetry
magazine.
David Zauhar
On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Ron Silliman wrote:
> It's been noted on the Poetics List that Michael Cuddihy, the poet and
> former editor of Ironwood, passed away a few days ago at 68 at his home in
> Arizona. Michael was wheel-chair bound from polio but managed to get more
> things accomplished in his lifetime than 10 fully-abled men. In the 1970s in
> particular I would run into him and his wife Mary at George and Mary Oppen's
> flat on Polk Street in San Francisco, during that period when George was
> slipping into that long silence of Alzheimer's disease. I liked Michael a
> great deal and was amazed at how open he was to so many different kinds of
> poetry. He also had a great sense of humor, which made him genuinely fun to
> be around. I miss him already.
>
> Ron Silliman
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