In 2003 the editors of 6x6 sent the following text to Guy Bennett & Beatrice Mousli in answer to their survey for an in article on little magazines in La Revue des Revues. At that time UDP and 6x6 were headquartered in a little house on Pioneer Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, just before the move to UDP’s first studio space in DUMBO; the editors in 2003 were Greg Ford, Anna Moschovakis, and Matvei Yankelevich; and 6x6 #7 was the newest issue. As the 36th issue of 6x6 is being assembled in anticipation of the Final Launch (Sept 8, 7pm, Knockdown Center), we thought it would be nice to share this piece about 6x6′s beginnings from deep in the archives.
NOTE: Thanks to G.L. Ford, one of the founding editors of 6x6, for digging this up. The original survey questions are in bold italic; we’ve also highlighted (in bold) some parts of special interest and added some hyperlinks where relevant.
It was our common conviction that most poetry magazines were too thick and heavy, with so many contributors it was difficult to get through the whole thing and still remember any specific works or voices. The space allowed each poet was often too small for the reader to really get an idea of what the poet was up to. In addition, most of these magazines seemed to be the vehicle for a single editor's taste or ego, and in fact, displayed the name of the editor most prominently in their first pages. Furthermore, the author bios most magazines
included suggested the career motives of both the poets and the publishers, as well as a concern with cliques and schools which were to us alienating and elitist.
We decided therefore not to publicize the names of the editors in its pages, and to make editorial choices collaboratively — a challenge, as the four editors, all poets in different veins, more often than not disagreed on submissions. We decided also to write more personal rejection letters to poets than any of us had ever received, with concrete criticisms and suggestions. In order to get away from the idea of the magazine as part of a market culture for this most marginalized of markets, we eschewed author bios. And no ads, of course. Most importantly, we decided to make each issue small and readable, and much, much cheaper than most of the magazines we saw on the bookshelves. We thought that each issue should be a kind of ephemeral book-object, perhaps somewhat mysterious and hard to pin down. In the beginning, many people indeed referred to 6x6 as a book, rather than a magazine. To add to the confusion of book/magazine, we would give each issue a title which was taken from the first line of the first poet in the respective issue.
After some discussion, we came up with a design modeled after the shape of the first Russian Futurist magazine, Tango with Cows (by Vasily Kamensky and the Burliuk Brothers, 1914). 6x6's cut corner and the rubber band binding (a zine-world invention) and the nearly obsolete technique of letterpress in opposition to pervading glossiness were supposed to make it apparent that we were "cutting corners" to save on expenses and putting our own hands into the work to stave off the anonymity, perfection and aloofness of clean mechanical reproduction.
The number of poets in each issue was chosen somewhat arbitrarily to be six, and the number of pages allotted to each poet was to be six as well. This had something to do with Julien Poirier's use of dice as a determining chance factor in his cut-up—influenced poetry of that time. Once, during the preliminary discussion of the magazine, we were playing dice against the walls of St Marks Church in New York City, outside of a reading at the Poetry Project. Thus 6x6 came to be the name of the magazine, and our goal was to get six authors to create poetry for six pages apiece.
6x6 number 1, subtitled “The hotel is in a bad part of town,” came out around July 4th, 2000. Alex, owner of Orlando Printing, a neighborhood offset printer, happened to have a Heidelberg letterpress machine sitting in the back of his tiny shop, which he was eager to use again after its long neglect. He printed the cover and the guts. Number 1 was hand-collated, folded, cut, trimmed, bound, and hand-stamped in the summer heat of our apartment HQ, just in time for the release party and reading. Both the assembly and the nightlong launch happened in Julien's and Greg's apartment (a few blocks away from Orlando Printing) on Duke Ellington Boulevard (W 106th Street) in Manhattan.
That apartment burned down in the spring of 2002, and with it went many of the back issues and submissions and a sufficient chunk of then recently released #5. But we've recovered and are still going, mostly due to the great responses we've gotten from poetry readers near and far. This summer, the operation will move to the new (though temporary) offices of Ugly Duckling Presse, just under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn.
Whom/What type of writing do you publish?
The type of writing we publish varies from issue to issue, and in fact within each issue. We have published some conceptual poetry (Lev Rubinstein's index card poem, "Time Goes On"), a six-page chunk of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko's prose-poem novel, "Chinese Sun", some sound poetry (like that of John M. Bennett), some New York poets (Eddie Berrigan, Jackie Waters, Lewis Warsh, Johanna Furhman, Steve Dalachinsky), some urban sequentialism (Michael Ford), some poets that might be grouped in under the heading of new metaphysical (Kathrine Sowerby, Samantha Visdaate, Keith Waldrop), a few translations from foreign poets, a bit of the West Coast and the East Coast, a bit of the South and the Mid-West. Some of it has been more formal, some quite avant-garde and eclectic. It has really always depended on what the editors thought was most interesting at the time.
How would you describe your magazine to somebody who does not know it?
6x6 is a compact, hand-bound poetry periodical that presents six pages each from six poets writing in a variety of traditions, from American avant-garde to lyrical and political, with an emphasis on works especially composed for the magazine's format.
What past or present magazines are important to you as an editor?
As mentioned before, the Russian Futurist magazines and a lot of the bookmaking aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde has played its role in our conception of 6x6. Can We Have Our Ball Back, though an on-line magazine, earns our respect with its simplicity and inclusiveness. San Jose Manual of Style is inspiring in its daring hands-on approach and content.
Technical information:
Editor(s): Current Editors: Gregory Ford, Anna Moschovakis, Matvei
Yankelevich. Editors Emeritus: Julien Poirier and Filip Marinovic.
Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (a non-profit arts/publishing collective)
Number of issues published to date: 7 issues as of spring 2003, Issue
8 due out in summer of 2003. Number of pages in a typical issue: 52
How to get a copy: at various bookstores, or directly through Ugly
Duckling Presse, 112 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231. Price: $3 single copy. Subscription Donation: $15 for one year (three issues). Poets' price: $10.
