NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX - Update

Earlier in this blog I mentioned that I would be presenting articles I wrote which were published in NEXT Magazine years ago. NEXT Magazine was a poetry scene magazine in start up when I gave a lot of energy to it for well over a year of my life. Like many such start up magazines it started up and sputtered, deficit of enough volunteers who shared the vision of what it might be by the editor and owner of the magazine, G. Murray Thomas. Like poetry magazines in particular it was started on small funds and failed to attract the kind of important advertising necessary to any magazine on any subject. But what was worse was the well known "fact" that poets were a stereotypically poverty-stricken group, bringing their own tea bags into independent artsy "coffee houses" and performance rooms because they just wanted the free hot water. Seems hardly anyone believed poets would read the magazine, read the ads, and actually spend.

Dealing with the poetry scene and the reality of poets who played upon those stereotypes as well was my forte. Coming up between music videos of songs that have come into my consciousness recently, I'll be running some of my articles from so long ago. Coming up first FROM RIGHT TO JONG, my review of the American Booksellers Convention of 1994...

Search for Erica Jong elsewhere on my blog...

Christine

Affirmed August 2025  Orignally posted August 30, 2008

Next Magazine Redux CHRISTINE TRZYNA articles coming up soon!

I recently found my collection of Next..., a thin newspaper sheet magazine founded by G. Murray Thomas and Lawrence Shultz, in support of the Southern California poetry community which went into start up in 1994. I was one of the original volunteers for Next... after meeting Murray and Lawrence when we did a surf poetry reading in Santa Barbara, California, and a proponent of the burgeoning "street" scene and open mic phenomena at the time, particularly at the NoHo independent "coffee house" (actually more of a creativity space since the coffee was pitch in the pot) called The Iguana.

I rarely worked in the office of Next. Instead I responded to thematics and deadlines from a distance and distributed copies to various venues in my area such as Emersons Coffee House and California State University - Northridge. My writerly contributions to Next... were with the understanding that all rights returned to me after printing. I have to say while I was reading my articles thirteen years later I felt a sense of pride in my writing. At the time I wrote these articles I was a less secure writer primarily because I was not on the right side of the politics of the poetry scene. It has taken this distance to acknowledge my very original "voice" and viewpoint, and to no longer feel the disapproval that came my way because some readers thought I was supposed to be in service of their vision.

Soon I'll be sharing my articles and providing some commentary on my own thoughts and feelings at the time I wrote the articles and the reactions that readers had to them.

Christine Trzyna

................... Stay tuned for Next... Redux.

Affirmed August 2025