Quarto has been around for over 60 years now, but why not take a look at Quarto’s more recent past? The 2008-2009 issue marks the beginning of Quarto’s reflection on the question “What is literary?” an idea that continues to characterize the magazine.
Take a look at the very first piece for example, Sandra Susser’s Index for the Ruination of Suburbia, a poem in the form of an index, or Aaron Rotenberg’s Rejected Manuscript, in which we see something like a lab report format become a poetic structure. Two non-fiction pieces in this issue, Ben Reninga’s Letters Home and Break Up Letter by Adrienne Giffen introduce the idea that non-fiction, far from being limited to personal essays or reportage, can contain something such as a letter, a piece of writing not only on the subject of true events, but actually pulled straight from their functional purpose in everyday life and transformed into something literary. In fiction, Matt Herzfeld’s How To Observe a Common Black Housefly Closely, Matthew Ira Swaye’s The Administrative Assistant, and Jim Urbom’s A Faerie Tale all seem to explore the form of the short short story.
These nontraditional forms alongside traditional short story, narrative non-fiction, and poetry pieces speak of Quarto’s goal to publish the best writing regardless of the form in which it comes. Whether an idea fits best into a standard form or subverts it, whether it feels born to be a prose poem or an index, a comic or a narrative, a short story or a letter, a haiku or a lab report, a transcription of comical class notes, a play, or a six word memoir, be inspired by the 2008-2009 issue to realize that anything can be literary.
2008-2009 Issue: http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/quarto/quarto-2008-2009-issue/
