Double Dealer Magazine – Lab Day 2

The two photographs attached above are of The Double Dealer magazine Volume 3 no. 17, published in May 1922. The magazine contains southern writing but was published in New Orleans. It has several contributors, one very popular one that immediately caught my eye was Ernest Hemingway. This magazine has a very modernist attitude, and a large part of the editorial even discusses sex. Along with southern culture, this magazine promotes a more contemporary style of writing. An interesting thing I found in the magazine’s editorial was its critique of Scott Fitzgerald’s take on modern characters.

Above is a picture of a poem called ‘Beth Marie’ by William Alexander Percy. This poem stood out to me when going through the magazine, mostly because of how melancholic it sounds. Even though it does not seem like a contemporary poem, it has some elements of it such as it exploring the personal experience and emotion of the poet. I read several poems in this magazine but this is one that sounds like an elegy. This is an interesting poem to contrast with Ginsberg’s elegy, which we recently read in class. While Percy’s is what you would expect from an elegy, Ginsberg writes something so different that it would seem even more appalling when compared next to “Beth Marie.”