From 1988 until 2009, Leslie Scalapino produced four O Books Anthologies, a single-issue magazine co-edited with Rick London titled enough, and a four-issue run of War & Peace (co-edited with Judith Goldman for issues 2–4). Scalapino’s editorial projects blurred lines between genres and challenged dominant discourses in both politics and poetics. From the Gulf War to the post-9/11 global war that continues to this day, war is ever-present in these pages as the featured poets create witness, rupture and encounter.
All O Books periodicals have been digitized and archived at Jacket2 Reissues, a digital, open access platform for magazines committed to poetry and poetics.
O/ANTHOLOGIES
In these anthologies Scalapino gathers a selection of O Books authors to write toward a shared awareness of sociality and world-building through experiments in the poetic form:
O/One: An Anthology (1988)
This collection focuses on extended writing that “questions and transgresses genre lines between forms of poetic and critical discourse.” The selections are process-based essays and works composed of poems, prose and commentary as lyrical expressions.
O/Two An Anthology: what is the inside, what is the outside? (1991)
The thirty-two poets and artists in this publication question the personal/political dichotomy and are writing toward individual and communal awareness, or what Bernadette Mayer might call “a Plural Dream of Social Life.”
O/Three: War (1993)
In this staple-bound collection with hand-made covers by Scalapino, six poets respond to the war machine and the ”us.” This “us” is being in relationship to, or as Norma Cole writes, in “Transgressive responsibility.” This volume is only available in digital format.
O/Four: Subliminal Time (1993)
The final anthology presents the writings of a selection of younger poets in juxtaposition to works by writers of ‘older’ generation, suggesting a ‘relational proximity’ in current writing, where “writing a real past is dilated present.”
ENOUGH
enough, edited by Leslie Scalapino & Rick London (2003)
enough is a one-off collection, edited by Leslie Scalapino and Rick London, following the start of the U.S. war on Afghanistan and 9/11. This publication brings together poets from the U.S., Britain, Palestine, Iraq and Israel to create dialogue, encounter and witness: as Scalapino writes “seeing what’s happening is a form of change.”
WAR & PEACE
Initiating a new editorial project immediately following enough, Scalapino wrote: “as in Tolstoy’s novel, everything can go on — everything goes on — in war and peace. To see being a form of action.”
War & Peace is a collection of poetry and art, wherein each volume takes a particular focus or theme as its organizing principle:
War & Peace, edited by Leslie Scalapino (2004)
War & Peace 2: Poetry & Essays, edited by Judith Goldman & Leslie Scalapino (2005)
War & Peace 3: The Future, edited by Judith Goldman & Leslie Scalapino (2007)
War & Peace 4: Vision & Text, edited by Judith Goldman & Leslie Scalapino (2009)
