The title is from the introduction of the initial issue of the White Dove Review. The White Dove Review was an independent literary magazine published in Tulsa, OK in five issues from 1959-1960 by four Central High School students: Ron Padgett (editor), Dick Gallup (assistant editor), Joe Brainard (art editor), and Michael Marsh (art editor). Betty Kennedy joined the editorial staff on issue 3 after Gallup and Marsh had graduated. As its introduction states, it was founded to present experimental writing and art “in a constructive light.”
At 15, Padgett began working at Louis Meyer Bookstore in Tulsa where the owner introduced him to Modernist poets and contemporary writing through the Evergreen Review. After subscribing to staple-bound Do-It-Yourself magazines like LeRoi Jones’s Yugen, Padgett was inspired to start his own. He asked Dick Gallup to co-edit and Joe Brainard to edit the art along with Michael Marsh. Padgett called the little magazine The White Dove Review after the cover of the Autumn 1958 issue of The Evergreen Review with a photo of a girl holding a dove. There were 5 issues, running from 1959 to May/August 1960.
Notable literary contributors to the magazine include:
• Allen Ginsberg
• Jack Kerouac
• Clarence Major
• Robert Creeley
• Ted Berrigan
• Gilbert Sorrentino
• David Meltzer
Special Collections is collaborating with a group of local artists and poets in the production of “The editors are not hipsters..” An evening celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the White Dove Review to be held on Sunday, 14 November, at the Circle Cinema, Tulsa. The doors open at 6.30 with the main event from 7-9 pm. Special Collections is going to be continuing the exhibit materials from the history of the production of the magazine, and later work with the New York school of Poetry until the end of the 2010 academic year.
— Grant Jenkins
