In addition to catching out plagiarists 56 years later, reading old literary magazines sometimes uncovers gems, like this one from Type magazine from Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University, because including the part of the state where it is located is gauche):
Because imagining how Shakespeare wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock”? Goysenberries, that hits me right in that spot.
Because only a decade later, 600 miles north, I was steeped in both.
Kids today? Not so much.
I shared it with my mother-in-law, the former English teacher to whom I recited Prufrock from memory on our first meeting, and I said those kids could only dream that they would be read in the future (and dream they likely did). 45 years later, I am here for them. I see you, Ruth Moore. A quick Internet search on a relatively common name does not indicate she went onto a literary life, but if I see a chapbook from her from 1985, you’re gramm right I’m snapping it up.
