Introducing Commune Magazine

Commune Editions, entering into its fifth year, was founded by three Bay Area poets when the entanglement of poetry and militant anticapitalist+antistate politics — locally, maybe nationally, maybe transnationally — was at an exciting and unsustainable high. That is to say, it comes out of a moment. Like most cases of intensity, that moment has not disappeared. Instead it has aerosolized into the atmosphere and is now, in ways that feel less new but still strange and different, part of the air we breathe.

Various other projects have arisen from that moment, at different velocities and intensities. One that we are particularly excited about is Commune Magazine. We should say that it isn’t us, so no one will be confused. We didn’t found it (and we didn’t choose the name). But we do have some overlap with it in staffing, and in political goals and assessments: Jasper Bernes is its managing editor, and Juliana Spahr and Joshua Clover serve as contributing editors. It seems like a way to make a record of the present, and to intervene in the present, with popular audiences not captured by party politics, with readers who share a sense that there are openings and possibilities that might not have been there a decade ago, even in these dark times. Especially in these dark times, when the nihilism of doing what we did before seems more evident than ever. Jasper has written a feature article about Ursula LeGuin and Moishe Postone and Juliana a review of recent books about Appalachia. Joshua has edited the entire review section

If you have not spent every last dime on Commune Editions poetry books and/or keeping body and soul together, we hope that you will consider subscribing or otherwise supporting them. Commune’s kickstarter is entering into its last three days. Help them start off on stable footing.