Secession, 1922-24 (dir. Gorham B. Munson)

Danny Snelson
Secession no. 2, July 1922 (cover by Ludwig Kassák)
Secession no. 2, July 1922 (cover by Ludwig Kassák)

Secession, founded in 1922 by Gorham B. Munson, sought to give corner to the “youngest generation” of interwar modernists. Printed at various junctures in Vienna, Berlin, New York, Florence, and Reutte (Tyrol), Secession nevertheless became an important platform distributing literary Dadaism to New York. Accompanied by editors Kenneth Burke, John Brooks Wheelwright, and Matthew Josephson (often operating under the nom de plume Will Bray), Secession moved in upredictable directions over the eight installments of its premeditated two-year run. Munson writes:

Beyond a two year span, observation shows, the vitality of most reviews is lowered and their contribution, accomplished, becomes repetitious and unnecessary. Secession will take care to avoid moribundity. (Secession no. 1, 25)


Countering Harold Loeb’s Broom on one side and Margaret Anderson’s Little Review on the other, Secession is marked by a critical attention to the literary politics of little magazines in the early twenties. In addition to Munson’s passionate inter-magazine editorials and Josephson’s translations of key works by Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon, and Hans Arp, Secession published a remarkable group of American poets and critics. Essays, poetry, and prose by Kenneth Burke, Matthew Josephson, Gorham B. Munson, John Brooks Wheelwright, Malcolm Cowley, Waldo Frank, Slater Brown, Robert Coates, E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams characterize the magazine. Secession also provided an outlet for Ivor Winter’s Notes on the Mechanics of the Poetic Image, devoting the entirety of its last issue to its publication.

Issues are available for browsing or download below. You may also download the entire set here: zip, 79mb. Click images for online reading copy in browser and full screen — download links below. Original pagination noted in contents. Editorial selections to follow.

Secession no. 1, Spring 1922
(dir. Gorham B. Munson)

p.1       Malcolm Cowley, “Day Coach”
p.4      Louis Aragon, “Bottle Found at Sea”
p.8      Matthew Josephson, “Peripatetics”
p.9      Will Bray, “Apollinaire: or Let Us Be    Troubadours”
p.14    Tristan Tzara, “instant note brother”
p.15    Gorham B. Munson “A Bow to the Adventurous.”
p.20    Tristan Tzara, “Unpublished Fragment from                    Mr. AA The Antiphilosopher”
p.21    Will Bray, “In a Café”
p.22    Gorham B. Munson, “Exposé No1”
p.25    Ed. “An Old Song to New Music”

Secession no. 2, July 1922
(dir. Gorham B. Munson)
(cover by Ludwig Kassák)

p.1      E. E. Cummings, “Four Poems”
p.5      Malcolm Cowley, “Play it for me again ...”
p.6      Malcolm Cowley, “Poem”
p.7      Kenneth Burke, The Book of Yul
p.18    Tristan Tzara, “Mr. AA The Antiphilosopher”
p.20    Slater Brown, “Plots for Penpushers”
p.21    Matthew Josephson, The Oblate
p.30    Gorham B. Munson, “Interstice Between Scylla                      and Charybdis”

Secession no. 3, August 1922
(ed. Gorham B. Munson and Matthew Josephson)
(cover by Hans Arp)

p.1      Waldo Frank, “Hope”
p.5      William Carlos Williams, “The Attempt”
p.6      Matthew Josephson, “Peep-peep Parrish”
p.12    Philippe Soupault, “Articles de sport”
p.13    Malcolm Cowley, “Poem”
p.14    Will Bray, “Cities II”
p.15    Hans Arp, “Arp the Trap-Drummer”
p.18    Kenneth Burke, “First Pastoral”
p.28    Matthew Josephson, “Mr. Blunderbuss” and Notes

Secession no. 4, January 1922
(ed. Gorham B. Munson)
(dir. Kenneth Burke, Matthew Josephson, and Gorham B. Munson)

p.1      Richard Ashton, “A Motor-Cycle, and Off to the                 Beach,” “In the Copley Ball-Room,” “Searchlights,”                 “Star — Wind,” “Moon — Garden”
p.5      Kenneth Burke, “In Quest of Olympus”
p.19    Wallace Stevens, “Last Look at the Lilacs”
p.20    Hart Crane, “Poster”
p.21    William Carlos Williams, “The Hothouse Plant
p.22    Slater Brown, “A Garden Party”
p.29    John Brooks Wheelwright, “Correspondence”
p.30    Gorham B. Munson, Response
p.31     Gorham B. Munson, “Congratulations and more                     ‘Ill-Mannered References’”
p.32    Kenneth Burke, “Note on Der Sturm”

Secession no. 5, July 1923
(ed. Malcolm Cowley and John Brooks Wheelwright)
(dir. Kenneth Burke and Gorham B. Munson)

p.1      Mark Turbyfill, “Crucified Shadows”
p.2      Gorham B. Munson, “Syrinx”
p.12    Marianne Moore, “Bowls”
p.13    E. E. Cummings, “Four Poems”
p.18    Malcolm Cowley, “Old Melodies”
p.20    John Brooks Wheelwright, “Comment”
p.26    Gorham B. Munson, “Correspondence”

Secession no. 6, September 1923
(ed. Malcolm Cowley and John Brooks Wheelwright)
(dir. Kenneth Burke and Gorham B. Munson)

p.1      Hart Crane, “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
p.4      John Brooks Wheelwright, Notes
p.5      Malcolm Cowley, “Into That Rarer Ether”
p.6      Robert Coates, The Crimson Emerald
p.20    S. Foster Damon, “Fantasia in a Restaurant”
p.25    John Brooks Wheelwright, “Unpublished                                  Portions of ‘Q’”
p.30    John Brooks Wheelwright, “Comment”

Secession no. 7, Winter 1924
(dir. Gorham B. Munson)

p.0     Gorham B. Munson, “Notes”
p.1      Hart Crane, “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
p.5      Waldo Frank, “For a Declaration of War”
p.15    Yvor Winters, “The Moonlight” and “Tewa Spring”
p.16    Gorham B. Munson, “Open Letter to the New                           Republic”
p.20    Yvor Winters, “The Resurrection”
p.21    Kenneth Burke, “A Progression”
p.30    Gorham B. Munson, ”Tinkering with Words”
p.32    Gorham B. Munson, “The American Murkury”
p.33    Gorham B. Munson, “Explanatory”

Secession no. 8, 1924
(dir. Gorham B. Munson)

p.1    Ivor Winters, The Testament of a Stone:                           Notes on the Mechanics of the Poetic Image

Editorial Selections on Secession:

Secession, no. 2

from Secession no. 2, 32:
Secession aims to be neither a personal nor an anthological magazine, but to be a group organ. It will make group-exclusions, found itself on a group-basis, point itself in a group-direction, and derive its stability and correctives from a group. True, is has as yet no detailed manifesto and no organized  group behind it. Its writers are scattered all over th world and have no common headquarters or generally sanctioned plans. Yet if one examines the writings of Kenneth Burke, Malcolm Cowley, E. E. Cummings, Foster Damon, Mark Turbyfill, the first two numbers of Secession, it is clear, I think, that there is a sizable corps of young American writers working substantially in the same direction, battling with similar problems, and achieving results which can be assembled in a fairly homogeneous review. Secession exists unreservedly for these and their kin.

Secession, no. 4

from Secession no. 4, 30:
For secession is not revolt. It is rather a resignation from a milieu whose objects are other than ours. It is an unemotional sloughing-off by writers who profit by the gains of that milieu, but have never been bound to it. It is, in essence, a prompt deviation into immediate esthetic concerns. Our warfare is not denying, but tangential.

Secession, no. 2

from Secession no. 5, 26:
CORRESPONDENCE.
                             To Secession.
Every man, it is prophesied, must eventually become his own brewer. Certainly, every man must already import his own art from Central Europe. The Dial, as official importer, lands too many dead fish .... Portrait of Richard Strauss by Max Liebermann (geboren 1847, now President of the Berlin Academy of Arts), Richard Specht on Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig on Dickens .... we produce this sort of stuff in vast quantities on this side, too. I recommend as a counter-irritant the Hungarian activist review, MA, edited by Ludwig Kassák. MA excels in experimental typographical composition, reproduces the latest work of Moholy-Nagy, Raoul Haussmann, Jacques Lipshitz, Picabia, Van Doesburg, Mondrian, Gleizes, Léger, Tatlin, Viking Eggeling, Man Ray, the Russian constructivists, and photographs of beautiful bridges, machines, and New York, and publishes translations from the avant-garde writers — in Germany, France, Russia and America, the last being represented so far by Malcolm Cowley, Gorham B. Munson, and William Carlos Williams.

Secession, no. 4

 from Secession no. 6, 19:
Mr. Frank Shay complains that the size and shape of Secession make it too easy for his customers to “lift” copies from his shop. While we are proud to have a circulation among thieves, we beg our impecunious patrons to divert their activities to Brentano’s, who are better able to stand the loss.

Secession, no. 5

August 31, 2011
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