The Autumn of Distant Voices

Cover of Statement, 1953. Note McGrath's name alongside those of Mel Weisburd, Stanley Kiesel, and others who would go on to help shape the LA poetry scene in the decades to follow.

Thomas McGrath’s influence on Los Angeles literary culture went far beyond his poetry. He also worked to build mediums in which politically-motivated poets could have a voice. In the early ‘50s, McGrath advised and contributed to Statement Magazine, the literary journal published by the LASC Department of English (and published at Cal State LA to this day), which provided an opportunity for students to share and showcase their literary talents. McGrath also assisted fellow politically and socially active poets in the founding of The California Quarterly, serving on the journal’s editorial board. When the Quarterly ended its run in 1956, Coastlines, founded by Mel Weisburd and Gene Frumkin (two of McGrath’s former students at LASC), carried on McGrath’s vision of a space for politically charged poetry. In the 1960s, McGrath founded Crazyhorse, an influential literary magazine that is still active, now at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.

An editorial in Statement's Spring 1954 issue seems to acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining the health and continuity of a literary journal (moreover seeming to hint at the struggle over McGrath's firing in the preceding year and the fleeting lessons it had left behind). It is all the more reason for Cal State LA to celebrate the perseverance and continued health of Statement today.

The Statement editorial from 1954 reads:

“Although this is the seventh consecutive issue of Statement, seven isolated struggles to get his magazine out have been waged. Each issue has sought to capture and to organize the talents which have momentarily passed through our classrooms. Each issue has groped for a tradition in the potentialities of our unrooted student body. For State College is a new school, reflecting in its formation something of the total confusions of modern living; but a school whose student body, none the less, sustains an interest in a serious literary magazine, and, amidst its myriad pursuits of individual ambitions, seeks to join the mainstream of our traditional literature.”