Running the Gamut

The Gamut may not be as well-known as The Advocate. But what it lacks in “RoboRodeo” parties and chain-smoking intellectuals, it’s making up for with innovation. Its next issue, slated to come out this April, will break new ground among literary magazines at Harvard by publishing a “chapbook,” devoting several pages of content to the poetry of one lucky student writer.

As the first Harvard publication to feature only poetry, the Gamut, started in 1998, has a pioneering tradition.

Its “chapbook” is another step forward. According to Editor Benjamin L. Purkert ’07, the Gamut got the idea for such an issue from major publications like American Poetry Review and Poetry Magazine.

Interested undergraduates looking to be the next big thing in poetry are asked to submit a 10-to-15 page manuscript of original work, which will then be judged for “artistic merit, evocative language, and innovative treatment of image,” according to Purkert.

The mag is soliciting writers through ads posted around campus and such unlikely places as the Advocate e-mail list.

It seems that there’s no real rivalry between the Gamut and The Advocate, despite the similarities of their content. When asked if the chapbook was a ploy to steal from the Advocate’s readership, Alexander J. Rothman ’07 of The Gamut offered an emphatic “No.” He said that at Harvard, “There’s enough good poetry being written to keep both magazines happy.”

Harvard does boast poetry heavyweights like e.e. cummings and T.S. Eliot as alumni. Might the Gamut’s chapbook uncover the poet of our generation?

FM’s playing it safe and getting our copy autographed. EBay, anyone?