08/12/2026
𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝘿𝙖𝙮: 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙋𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝘽𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙨 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨, opening Saturday, August 22, 2–4 PM
𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝘽𝙞𝙜 𝙎𝙠𝙮 (1971-1978)
Poet, critic, and educator Bill Berkson founded 𝘉𝘪𝘨 𝘚𝘬𝘺 shortly after arriving in Bolinas in 1971, and the magazine quickly became one of the most vital small literary publications in America, acting as a bridge between the New York School world Berkson had come from and the West Coast community he had joined.
The magazine ran for twelve issues over seven years, featuring poetry, photography, artwork, prose, and experimental writing in a format that treated the visual and the verbal as equals. This was not a magazine with a single aesthetic position. It was a magazine with a community, and the community was varied and lively.
The contributor list reads like a roll call of the era’s most significant poets: Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, Joanne Kyger, Jim Carroll, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Lewis MacAdams, Clark Coolidge, Robert Creeley, and many others. The covers were designed by artists of equal stature, including Philip Guston, Joe Brainard, Red Grooms, and, most frequently, Gordon Baldwin, whose fantastical pen-and-ink drawings gave Big Sky a visual identity as distinctive as its literary one.
𝘉𝘪𝘨 𝘚𝘬𝘺 Books extended the project into the world of the poetry chapbook and collection, publishing twenty titles by 1978. Together, the magazine and the books constitute the most complete literary record of Bolinas in its remarkable decade, assembled issue by issue and title by title by one editor working from a small coastal town at the edge of the continent, doing what the best little magazines have always done: making the present moment visible to itself.
See 𝘉𝘪𝘨 𝘚𝘬𝘺 on view in 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝘿𝙖𝙮, opening Saturday, August 22, 2–4 PM and on view through September 27. Free and open to all.
