Chicago Review
Poetry, fiction, reviews, and more
chicagoreview.org
Approaching seventy-five years in print, Chicago Review (CR) has established itself as one of the most influential contemporary literary journals in North America. In the late 1950s, CR played a leading role in promoting the literary counterculture of the Beats, publishing the work of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, among others, at a time when mainstream publishers refused to for fear of obscenity charges. In the 1960s, CR became the major vehicle for the reception of concrete poetry and other European avant-garde movements in the United States; in the 1970s, the journal was the leading proponent of experimental metafiction and other expressions of postmodernism; and in the 1980s and early 1990s, it became a resurgent powerhouse for the translation of contemporary world literatures in English, publishing authors from over forty countries to date. In recent years, CR has been noted for publishing special dossiers that have brought renewed critical and scholarly attention to once neglected and underrated authors, including Mina Loy, Louis Zukofsky, and Kenneth Rexroth. Most recently, CR has published special issues on the Infrarealist movement, the Scottish modernist W. S. Graham and the Black Arts Movement in Chicago. According to Stephanie Burt, professor at Harvard University and poetry editor of The Nation, CR throughout the years “has played a unique and irreplaceably valuable role in the complex and sometimes threatened ecosystem of contemporary poetry in North America and beyond.”
