From January, 1962 through July, 1969, El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn was on the cutting edge of independent publishing. The bilingual quarterly, which ran from 100 to almost 300 pages per issue, published some of the best new work to come out of Latin and North America—with occasional sections from Canada, Finland, France, and other countries. Its 3,000 copies were distributed worldwide. The journal was founded and co-edited by Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragon. In its last year Robert Cohen replaced Mondragon on the masthead. Because it took a stand in defense of Mexico’s 1968 Student Movement, in mid-1969 the journal was forced to close. It had published 31 issues and a dozen books.
See complete El Corno Emplumado, plus interesting ephemera, at
EL CORNO EMPLUMADO - A STORY OF THE SIXTIES, a film available in English and Spanish versions, is available at El Corno Emplumado
El Corno Emplumado 1 was the first issue of a new bilingual quarterly out of Mexico City. Sergio Mondragon, Harvey Wolin (who left the project shortly after this issue), and Margaret walked Mexico City’s Streets looking for poetry and patronage. Support came from Jose Goroztiza, Mexico’s (...)
El Corno’s first issue quickly established its authenticity—the promise that we would publish quarterly and that the journal’s pages would serve poetry rather than the other way around. Now, instead of our trying to convince people we were serious about producing a literary journal, they began to (...)
Now the journal was making a name for itself. The typographical covers, with the publication’s name in continuous script across the top and the issue’s contributor’s names in continuous script along the bottom, each in its own bright color, began to be familiar to readers far and wide.
El Corno (...)
As we approached the end of our first year, we decided to devote the entire last issue of each year to a book by a single poet—in bilingual, facing text format. This would require a great deal of work, but we were enthusiastic about embarking on this tradition, making a good body of work by one (...)
We begin our second year! To cut costs, with El Corno #5 we experimented with a different quality paper. It was an experiment we would not repeat. (El Corno was printed back in the days of linotype and letterpress. Small independent print shops produced our press runs. We were always looking (...)
Margaret Randall
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