Aufgabe, 2001–2014 (ed. E. Tracy Grinnell et al.)

The task of recounting the work of Aufgabe is formidable. Founding editor E. Tracy Grinnell initiated the magazine in the Bay Area in 1999. Over the next fifteen years, Aufgabe has featured seventy editors, roughly 700 writers, nearly 150 translators, and twenty artists from twenty-three countries. The magazine was uniformly released from 2001 until 2014 in perfect-bound 6″ x 9″ format with one thousand copies printed per issue. In each issue, Aufgabe “challenges static cultural modes of thinking and being” through a dense global network of innovative poetry and poetics.

From the first issue, the magazine forefronts the “the editorial art itself” with a selection of material text images of French publications selected by Norma Cole. Guest editors drive each issue of Aufgabe with focused selections of translations in a range of geographically oriented poetries, including: Norma Cole (France), Rosmarie Waldrop (Germany), Jen Hofer (Mexico), Sawako Nakayasu (Japan), Guy Bennett and Jalal El Hakmaoui (Morocco), Ray Bianchi (Brazil), Jennifer Scappettone (Italy), Matvei Yankelevich (Russia), Mark Tardi (Poland), Cole Swensen (France), Christian Nagler (El Salvador), Oana Avasilichioaei (Quebec), and Biswamit Dwibedy (India). In each of these selections the reader discovers new trajectories for poetry unbound from state and language.

In a recent retrospective interview on the magazine for Harriet, Grinnell characterizes the coelaboration of Aufgabe as “a space where I can hear the complexities of language against the distortions, hear different voices, and connect with a broader community of artists and writers in camaraderie.” These voices connect — and distort, resist, refuse — within a magazine featuring poetry in translation alongside innovative poetry and poetics, reviews, essays, and artworks in an elegant assemblage of global poetic experimentation.

Full issues are available for download or browsing below. The index to each issue attempts to retain the formatting of the contents as printed in the magazine, including original pagination. Each PDF is fully searchable and bookmarked for easy navigation to individual pieces within the magazine.

This reissue is edited by Danny Snelson with the gracious support of the Kelly Writers House and the generosity of Litmus Press. here’s the link to the first issue: