I want you to picture, just for a second, the
sheer volume of content you scroll past on any
given Tuesday. Oh, it is an absolute avalanche.
Right, exactly. Thousands of posts, articles,
videos, all competing for just a fraction of
your attention. You just swipe, swipe, swipe.
You barely even register half of it. Yeah, you
really don't. Now, imagine if I told you that
one of the most profound cultural shifts in modern
literature wasn't started by, you know, a massive
media empire with millions of followers. Or a
viral algorithm. Right, or an algorithm. Instead,
it was sparked by a tiny, seemingly insignificant
publication from the year 1915. And this publication
had... fewer than 300 subscribers. 300. That
is just, it's wild to think about. 300. I am
so incredibly excited to welcome you to today's
deep dive where we are pouring over a fascinating
Wikipedia article on a little literary magazine
called Others, a magazine of the new verse. It
is such an incredible piece of history. It really
is. And our mission today is simple but powerful.
We are going to extract the core insights from
our source material on how a small group of marginalized
creators built a sanctuary for otherness that
ended up completely rewriting the rules of the
written word. A total paradigm shift. Exactly.
It is a perfect study in how you can avoid information
overload by focusing on high impact history.
You don't need a million voices to change the
world. Sometimes you just need. the right 300
listening. It truly is a remarkable story. But
to fully grasp what we're looking at today, it's
essential to understand that this isn't just
a story about poetry. No, not at all. If you
look at the source text, it becomes immediately
clear that this is a story about the American
identity itself. I mean, we are talking about
1915. It's the explosive rise of the industrial
metropolis, the intense collision of different
cultures, and the deliberate, forceful disruption
of societal norms. It was a very volatile time.
Very. We are looking at a crucible moment where
the very definition of what it meant to be an
artist, to be a woman, to be an immigrant, was
actively being dismantled and reassembled right
there on the printed page. Okay, let's unpack
this. Because the origin of this magazine is
where the whole vision really starts. We have
to begin. with a man named Alfred Kreimberg.
Right. According to our source, Kreimberg was
completely mesmerized by another visionary of
the time, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
Yes, a massive figure in the art world. Huge.
Stieglitz had this internationally renowned art
gallery known as 291, and he produced a magazine
of the same name. His whole objective was to
publish original artwork by new unknown artists.
To give them a real platform. Right. So Kreinberg
looks at this and is just enthralled by the atmosphere.
He sees experimental artists and photographers
gathering together, exchanging bold ideas and
actually earning praise for art that would have
been completely ridiculed by the mainstream.
Which was most of it, honestly. Yeah. So Kreinberg
decides he wants to create that exact same kind
of sanctuary, but exclusively for literary artists.
But. He doesn't just immediately launch others,
right? He actually has a pretty significant failure
first. He does, yeah. Before others, Cranberg
attempted to launch a magazine called The Glebe.
And the name itself is very telling. A glebe
literally means a field or a piece of cultivated
land. Oh, I like that. Yeah, he envisioned this
open, fertile field for new artists who lack
the confidence or the mainstream opportunity
to share their experimental work. He managed
to secure financial backing from two men. Albert
and Charles Boney. But the entire project collapsed
relatively quickly. What caused it to fall apart
so fast? Was it just a lack of readership? It
actually collapsed due to a very specific ideological
conflict behind the scenes. Oh, really? Yeah.
Kremburg wanted to use this platform to champion
American experimentalists. He was looking at
the raw, homegrown talent right there in the
city. He wanted local voices. Exactly. The Boney
brothers, however, strongly preferred European
art. They wanted to stick to the established
traditional centers of culture across the Atlantic.
So a classic old world versus new world debate.
Precisely. But Kreimberg remained intensely loyal
to his desire for raw, local experimentation.
He absolutely refused to compromise his vision,
so he resigned as editor and the glebe slowly
fell apart without him. So Kreinberg walks away
from his own project because he refuses to sell
out his vision. I respect that, but that leaves
him back at square one with no money. How does
he actually get others off the ground a few years
later? That's where a man named Walter Conrad
Ahrensberg comes in. In July 1915, Ahrensberg
provides the critical financial backing and others.
A magazine of the new verse is officially born
in New York City. And they kept the barrier to
entry incredibly low, didn't they? Very low.
each copy of the magazine was sold for just 20
cents 20 cents a copy under 300 subscribers and
it becomes the launch pad for a literary revolution
the whole purpose was to create a space for unity
among individuals who differed from the norms
of society A literal home for the others. Yes.
And they had the most incredible motto, which
I just have to quote directly. The old expressions
are with us always, and there are always others.
It's such a bold line in the sand. What's fascinating
here is the deep structural connection this magazine
had to its physical and cultural environment.
Others wasn't operating in a vacuum up in some
ivory tower. No, it was very grounded. It proclaimed
a strong, active affiliation with the local community
of the Lower East Side in New York. At that time,
you have to picture a neighborhood teeming with
a mixed population of excluded immigrants, particularly
Jewish immigrants. The poets of others deliberately
wanted to project a positive image of Jewish
immigration. They were actively subverting a
very pervasive negative stereotype of the time.
The article mentions this self -deprecating Jew
stereotype that was being heavily perpetuated
by what they call Euro -modernism and by rival
publications like The Little Review. Yes. But
for the listener who might not be a literary
historian, what exactly do we mean when we talk
about Euro -modernism in this context? Think
of Euro -modernism as the old guard of the literary
establishment. We are talking about rigid structures.
rhyming couplets, very traditional, almost aristocratic
subjects. Very stuffy. Very stuffy. It was an
aesthetic that viewed any intrusion of foreignness
as a literal contamination of traditional literature.
Others, on the other hand, was pushing what we
call free verse. Right, breaking all the rules.
This basically threw the old rule book out the
window. No rhyming, no traditional meter, just...
raw, spoken rhythm that mirrored the chaotic
energy of the city. I love that image. So while
Euromodernism looked down on the immigrant population,
others framed this very same community not as
something to be ridiculed, but as the literal
representation of social and intellectual progressivism.
They saw the Lower East Side as the embodiment
of the experimentation of the new. Which is why
the critics went absolutely wild. Because Others
was a house for this innovative free verse, critics
labeled the magazine dangerous and offensive.
Dangerous and offensive. It's almost funny to
think of poetry being called dangerous and offensive
just because it didn't rhyme and embrace new
cultures. But they were tackling massive, heavy
themes. They absolutely were. This tiny 20 cent
magazine was diving headfirst into the realities
of American life. They were writing about the
grit of the industrial metropolis, the explosive
dynamics of machine age labor and the. absolute
catastrophe of global warfare. Very heavy, very
real issues. But as they did this, the source
material notes that the magazine acquired a reputation
for individualism, but also a very specific image
of queerness. Now, we are talking about the 1910s.
I imagine that word carried a very different
weight and meaning back then than it does today.
What exactly were critics accusing them of? That
is a crucial distinction to make for anyone listening
today. In this specific literary environment
in the 1910s, queerness was not strictly... or
entirely associated with homosexuality. It was
used as a catch -all term by the establishment
to describe radical innovation and the breaking
free of societal norms. So just anything outside
the box. Exactly. It meant a total rejection
of conventional styles of poetry, coupled with
a fierce resistance to sexual modesty. If you
didn't conform to the polite, traditional way
of living and writing, your work was labeled
queer. And the backlash they faced from the establishment
was relentless. rival poetry magazines like Poetry
and the Little Magazine openly criticized this
new verse style. They actually called the entire
accomplishment of others a fluke. It's completely
dismissive. Completely. But the gendered insults
are what really stand out to me. The male poets
who contributed to others were mocked by critics
as being weak and effeminate. Right. So essentially,
the 1915 version of internet trolls were just
calling these guys soft for writing free verse
instead of traditional sonnets. Meanwhile, the
women writers who published there were portrayed
as supermodern Sappho. Which was a direct accusation
of being female homosexuals, meant entirely to
dismiss and demean their work. The critics couldn't
attack the underlying intellect of the poetry,
so they attacked the perceived masculinity or
femininity of the poets themselves. That is so
frustrating, but unfortunately not surprising.
No, it's a very common tactic. Yet, despite this
barrage of criticism from traditional readers
and rival editors, the work ultimately spoke
for itself. Reviewers like H .L. Mencken and
J .B. Kerfoot actually stepped up to defend them.
They saw what was really happening. Yes, they
recognized and acknowledged this. free verse,
not as a dangerous contamination, but as a movement
that was fundamentally reawakening American individualism.
And when you look at the roster of talent they
managed to cram into this tiny publication, it
is just staggering. We are talking about the
undisputed heavy hitters of modern literature.
Oh, the list is incredible. Ezra Pound, T .S.
Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Fenton Johnson, who
the article explicitly notes was the only African
-American published in the magazine at the time.
A huge milestone. Here's where it gets really
interesting. I want to talk about the women who
defined the bold, unapologetic image of others,
specifically. Mina Loy. In 1915, she publishes
her love songs in the magazine. This is not your
standard polite romantic poetry. Not at all.
To understand the shockwave Mina Loy caused,
you have to remember the strict Victorian conventions
that still held a massive grip on society. Right,
the separate spheres. Exactly. The Victorian
era dictated very rigid gender norms. Men operated
in the public sphere of business and ideas, while
women were strictly confined to the private sphere
of the home, purity, and quiet domesticity. Women
were certainly not supposed to have, let alone
express, public sexual desires. Never. And then
Mina Loy kicks the door down. Her love songs
featured incredibly graphic writing, depicting
scenes of explicit sex and grotesque sexuality.
She was completely mocking the polite romantic
conventions of Victorian writing. Loy is a perfect
example of the symbiotic relationship between
these creators and the Others platform. Loy needed
Others as an uncensored space to perpetuate her
unorthodox values, and Others heavily depended
on Loy to establish its image of absolute boldness.
They fed off each other. They did. By representing
herself as a sexual woman who was deeply skeptical
of traditional romance, she effectively inverted
those rigid Victorian gender norms. Her aggressive
articulation of female fantasies completely rejected
the societal denial of female sexuality. It must
have been so scandalous. It was. And crucially,
unlike the mainstream magazines, Others was willing
to publish her longer works exactly as she wrote
them, without imposing format standards or censoring
her content to protect the delicate sensibilities
of the reader. So you have Mina Loy blowing up
Victorian conventions with raw, explicit sexuality.
But then, on the other hand, you have Marianne
Moore. And what strikes me about Moore is how
she approached this rebellion so differently.
Very differently. She departs from those modern
sexual conventions entirely. She wasn't using
shock value in the same way. Yes. Moore's innovation
was entirely structural and intellectual. Instead
of being sexually provocative to challenge gender
norms, she inclined to manipulate the very use
of grammar itself. Grammar is a tool of rebellion.
I love that. It's brilliant. She used language
to equalize the positions of male and female
subjects and objects within her sentences. She
was essentially transforming language to free
herself from the constraints of sexual difference,
pushing the idea that people should be judged
on the basis of their abilities rather than adhering
to any ideas of inherent cultural or gender superiority.
The imagery she used was so distinctive too.
The article points out that more frequently felt
out of place in society, and she would recurrently
use animals in her poetry to reflect her concern
for literature and nature. Right, the animal
motifs. Like in her poem, Critics and Connoisseurs,
she uses the image of a black swan to express
this profound theme of independence. Her style
wasn't dangerous and provocative like Loy's,
but both of their names are forever linked in
others because they shared this incredible freshness,
novelty, and total break from the old guard.
And that break from tradition took many physical
forms on the page. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, we have to look at William Carlos
Williams. He was one of the primary contributors
to the magazine and a massive enthusiast for
testing the boundaries of what poetry could look
like. His contribution to poetic innovation is
one of my favorite takeaways from this whole
deep dive. William Carlos Williams is the one
who introduced the elimination of capital letters
at the beginning of poetic lines. A huge shift.
Now, to us today, writing without capital letters
just looks like a casual text message. But back
then, capitalizing the start of every single
line was the ultimate unquestionable sign of
high art it was the standard by dropping to lowercase
williams was basically saying poetry isn't just
for the elite it's the language of the everyday
person on the street it was a visual rebellion
right there on the page and his own background
played a huge role in his perspective didn't
it it absolutely did williams had a mixed ancestry
of puerto rican and english descent which furthered
his own personal affiliation with that core concept
of otherness He understood what it meant to be
outside the mainstream. He did. He claimed that
America was his only possible home. Living in
the area, he witnessed firsthand the openness
to the immigrant population that was radically
changing the demographic landscape of the country.
And unlike the traditionalists who feared it,
he saw incredible potential there. So he embraced
it. Yes. He believed that Jewish immigration
and the overall increase of racial blending were
going to directly affect and elevate American
poetry. He saw the demographic shift as the very
engine of literary progress. This forward thinking
mentality really came to a head in 1916. The
magazine releases a special issue called A Woman's
Number, which was edited entirely by Helen Hoyt.
This was a massive moment. The purpose of A Woman's
Number was groundbreaking for the era. Hoyt's
goal was to establish a brand new relationship
between the inner woman and the outside world.
She wanted to portray a hidden femininity that
could be translated through the expression of
poetry, pushing the radical, unifying idea that
art is surely sexless. It provided a space for
self -expression, exploring the private prospect
of female experiences and attitudes, largely
using free verse as an act of emancipation from
the deeply repressive sexuality of the decade.
And the examples from the text are so powerful.
I want you, the listener, to really imagine opening
a magazine in 1916 and reading this. The issue
featured Hoyt's own poem called To a Pregnant
Woman, where she writes, So absolutely to command,
to serve, to keep. knowing you hold the beating
life of the beloved in the depths of your life.
It's so visceral. It completely lays bare the
intimate realities, the physical weight, and
the control of a woman's own body. It wasn't
hidden behind polite metaphor. And you also had
poets like H .G. writing boldly about female
sexuality, using the concept of evening as a
symbol of sensualism to convey bodily desires.
Naturally, the traditional critics condemned
the issue for its controversial themes. They
did. The critical pushback was immense. But the
external critics weren't the only threat to the
magazine. Unfortunately, Others was constantly
battling for its own internal survival. Wait,
so they have this massive artistic success with
A Woman's Number in 1916, but behind the scenes
things are falling apart. How does it go from
this creative peak to being on the verge of collapse?
It ultimately came down to the classic struggle
of financing a revolution. It always comes down
to the money. Always. By late 1916, they were
running out of money, and the internal dynamics
were fraying. Kreinberg needed new partnerships
and financial support just to keep the printing
presses running. So he brings in William Carlos
Williams to help co -edit, along with a few others
like F .S. Flint and Maxwell Bodenheim. Okay,
bringing in some fresh energy. But instead of
saving the original vision, the relationships
eventually soured. Williams fiercely rejected
Kreinberg's ideas for further expanding the magazine,
believing it was losing its sharp experimental
edge. Which leads to the most explosive and honestly
kind of hilarious ending to a publication I've
ever heard of. In 1919, William Carlos Williams
essentially takes the reins for the final issue
and officially puts a stop to the magazine. He
shuts it down. But he doesn't just quietly shut
the doors and send a polite thank you note to
the subscribers. He includes an eight page section
at the very end entitled Belly Music. And it
is an. absolute rant. Oh, he let them have it.
He uses these final pages to tear into the entire
landscape of American poetry criticism, famously
describing it as sophomoric, puling, and nonsensical.
What a mic drop. He killed the magazine but went
out swinging at the establishment. He certainly
made sure they had the last word. But in that
same rant, he also assured the public that the
end of others was only a pretext for another
new beginning. And history proved him right.
It didn't just end there. No, others didn't simply
disappear without a trace. The community they
built survived the death of the physical magazine.
The writers who had contributed to the others
continued to work together, frequently reviewing
each other's new work and championing the free
verse movement. They kept the spirit alive. They
did. And structurally, the legacy was preserved
when Scofield Thayer The co -publisher and co
-editor of a major, well -funded publication
called The Dial asked many of the other's writers
to bring their work to his magazine. Ultimately,
The Dial carried on the exact poetic tone and
experimental spirit that others had established.
So what does this all mean? We started by looking
at a tiny publication from 1915. And what we
found is an almost impossible paradox. A magazine
with a maximum of 300 subscribers printed on
cheap paper and sold for 20 cents a copy managed
to become the launching pad for American modernism.
It's an incredible legacy. It provided an uncensored
platform that empowered women to reclaim their
private spaces and their physical bodies from
Victorian standards. It actively celebrated excluded
immigrants and racial blending as the literal
future of art. It completely changed the trajectory
of American literature. This raises an important
question about how we value knowledge and where
we look for community. The story of others proves
that true innovation rarely comes from the well
-funded center of the establishment. It never
does. It happens on the fringes. It happens when
marginalized groups create safe, dedicated spaces
where they are allowed to experiment, to fail,
and to be viewed as dangerous by the old guard.
They didn't need mass societal approval. They
just needed a cultivated space to foster their
otherness. And that leaves us with a lingering
thought for you to explore on your own. We live
in an era obsessed with scale. We measure our
impact in millions of views, algorithmic virality,
and global trending topics. We want everything
to be massive immediately. Exactly. But if a
magazine called Others was able to spark a permanent
cultural and literary revolution with just 300
subscribers and 20 cent paper copies in 1915,
what defines the actual critical mass needed
to change the world today? In our modern era
of endless digital noise, is it possible that
true, lasting artistic rebellion still only requires
an audience of 300 highly dedicated others? Thank
you so much for taking this deep dive with us
today. Keep looking for those hidden pieces of
history, and we will see you next time.