Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era

• Estelle Gershgoren Novak — Original editor, introduction author, poet, and compiler of documentary apparatus
• Brian Kim Stefans — Reading-edition note author and digital editor
• Philip Levine — Foreword author
• The California Quarterly Editorial Board — Collective editorial contributor
• The California Quarterly Art Editor — Editorial statement contributor; individual not identified in the displayed credit
• Coastlines Editors — Collective editorial contributor
• Thomas McGrath — Poet, testimony author, critic, and prose contributor
• E. P. Thompson — Tribute author
• Eugene Frumkin — Poet, memoirist, critic, and editorial contributor
• Ann Stanford — Poet and diarist
• Alice McGrath — Remembrance author and photographer
• Sergio Ramírez — Tribute author
• Edwin Rolfe — Poet
• Don Gordon — Poet
• Naomi Replansky — Poet
• William Pillin — Poet and statement author
• Alvaro Cardona-Hine — Poet, letter writer, remembrance author, and translator
• Miguel Hernández — Poet translated by Alvaro Cardona-Hine
• Henri Coulette — Poet
• Curtis Zahn — Poet
• Josephine Ain — Poet and remembrance author
• Lawrence Spingarn — Poet; source contents variant “Lawrence Springarn”
• Bert Meyers — Poet and letter writer; source contents variant “Burt Meyers”
• Mel Weisburd — Poet, editor, essayist, interviewee, and letter writer
• Stanley Kiesel — Poet
• Sid Gershgoren — Poet
• Peter Yates — Essayist
• Lawrence Lipton — Poet, memoirist, interviewee, and letter writer
• Charles Bukowski — Poet
• Alexandra Garrett — Essayist
• Mario Casetta — Woodcut artist
• Morton Dimondstein — Engraver, painter, sculptor, and California Quarterly art editor
• Milton Gershgoren — Painter and graphic artist
• Sylvia Jarrico — Artist; credit form retained from the source contributor record
• Chris Jenkyns — Designer and illustrator
• David Lemon — Painter and Coastlines cover artist
• Martin Lubner — Painter and drawing artist
• Arnold Mesches — Painter and drawing artist
• Lowell Naeve — Artist; credit form retained from the source contributor record
• Earl Newman — Poster and silkscreen artist
• Manuel Santana — Painter
• Bernice Silberman — Lithographer, animator, and art teacher
• Polia Pillin — Linoleum-block artist, ceramist, and graphic artist

Broad format

Anthologies

Collection

Los Angeles Poetry Anthologies

Document type

Poetry Anthology

Original title

Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era

Original publication date

2002

Series

Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series

Editor

Estelle Gershgoren Novak; Brian Kim Stefans (digital edition)

Compiler

Estelle Gershgoren Novak

Translator

Alvaro Cardona-Hine (Miguel Hernández selection)

Original publisher

University of New Mexico Press

Place of publication

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Language

English; one poem translated from Spanish

Pagination

Original edition: xx, 274 pages. Local source scan: 298 PDF pages including covers and blank matter. Digital reading edition: 295 PDF pages.

Available editions

Complete 6 × 9 Digital Reading Edition

Edition type

Complete Illustrated Digital Reading Edition

ISBN

0-8263-2951-9 (hardcover) 0-8263-2952-7 (paperback)

Subjects

Keywords

Poets of the Non-Existent City Estelle Gershgoren Novak Thomas McGrath Edwin Rolfe California Quarterly Coastlines Los Angeles poetry McCarthy era HUAC little magazines University of New Mexico Press 2002

Continuity notes

This volume complements the site’s editions of Poetry Los Angeles I, the individual poet volumes for Thomas McGrath, Edwin Rolfe, Josephine Ain, Bert Meyers, Mel Weisburd, Eugene Frumkin, Stanley Kiesel, and others, and the archival runs of The California Quarterly and Coastlines.

Edition note

The complete illustrated anthology was prepared on exact 6 × 9 inch pages. The editorial pass checked every page for missing gutter text, OCR substitutions, dropped words, accidental line joins, damaged stanza divisions, lost indentation, incorrect italics, incomplete captions, page-order errors, and clipped artwork. The new cover uses a cream, black, gray, and oxidized-red photomontage of Los Angeles street grids, palms, typewriter keys, pages, and a microphone, echoing the angular fragments of the original jacket and the handmade visual language of the journals without copying either design. The private source scans remain production evidence and are excluded from the public upload package.

Source note

The 139 detailed text-and-apparatus entries and their first reader-PDF pages were checked against the source contents and the 295-page reading edition. The source contents prints “Lawrence Springarn” and “Burt Meyers”; the body headings support Lawrence Spingarn and Bert Meyers. Artist roles were retained and merged into Contributors; the illustration list remains a separate source apparatus entry.

Copyright notice

Original compilation and editorial matter © 2002 Estelle Gershgoren Novak; original publication by the University of New Mexico Press. This record makes no item-level determination for poems, prose, photographs, or artwork. Reading-edition note, design, and digital preparation © 2026 Brian Kim Stefans.

Rights status

Permissions Pending

Rights basis

Permissions review is in progress and is being handled separately by the project owner.

Suggested citation

Novak, Estelle Gershgoren, ed. Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era. Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Text/Tech Anthologies and Documents, reader's edition, 2026.