Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press

University of Bristol comp lit lecturer Kosick (Material Poetics in Hemispheric America) delves in this comprehensive account into the history of the Alternative Press, a Detroit-based indie that from the 1960s to the 1990s published cutting-edge experimental art, poetry, and literature. It’s contributors—including Amiri Baraka, Robert Bly, Robert Creely, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginbsberg, Bernadette Mayer, and Eileen Myles—are a veritable who’s who of the late-20th-century American avant-garde, but in Kosick’s telling the press’s founding and early years are a story of local pride and tight-knit community. “We always wanted to publish our friends. Why would you want to publish your enemies?” quips Ken Mikolowski, who cofounded the press with his wife, Ann. It was over time, Kosick writes, that the Alternative Press built up trust with authors farther afield, becoming a flagship of the national and even the global avant garde. Kosick dedicates part of her account to highlighting the difficulty she encountered in her study of the press’s history, as much of its output has not been properly archived (a fact she chalks up partly to the underground press’s limited and idiosyncratic print runs, which ranged from bumper stickers to bookmarks, and partly to mainstream academia’s overlooking of broadsides printed in a city better known for churning out automobiles). It adds up to an evocative overview of a legendary publisher. (Mar.)