"This is the only literary magazine...where every poem and story engaged me, challenged me, provoked, entertained me. If anyone is giving an award for the Best New Literary Magazine, I got this recommendation I want to make."
—Small Magazine Review
This magazine presents a gathering of solid poem work. No trash. No self-serving ego get ahead showboat editorial I publish your poem and you will write me a blurb junk. No sleep with me I slept with Walt Whitman bull poetics. Unafraid the red giant stars shine with the twinkle twinkles."
— Taproot Reviews
The arts have indeed "some sort of common bond, some inter-recognition."
Yet certain emotions or subjects find their most appropriate expression in
some one particular art. The work of art which is most "worth while"
is the work which would need a hundred works of any other art to explain it.
A fine statue is the core of a hundred poems. A fine poem is a score of symphonies. There is music which would need a hundred paintings to express it... Such works are what we call works of the "first intensity."
-- Ezra Pound, from "Vorticism" Forthnighty Review Vol. 96, 1914
Founded in 1993 by Lee Chapman, FIRST INTENSITY is an annual literary journal.
Each perfectbound issue contains 200+ pages
Cover price: $14 (+$2 p/h inside the U.S., Mexico & Canada;
add $10 for overseas surface mail)
U.S. subscription rates: 2 big issues (one per year) — $28
($32 for libraries & institutions)
Check or money order (U.S. funds) to:
First Intensity
P.O. Box 665
Lawrence, Kansas 66044
Special to serious writers and readers of serious writing:
As we have no federal, state or major private funding,
any financial contribution, no matter how small,
is most welcome and deeply appreciated.
Every dollar goes to our printers; they refuse to work for free.
Without your help, First Intensity's existence is in serious jeopardy.