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
