Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

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Empty Mirror 25th Anniversary

Empty Mirror celebrated its 25th anniversary on May 31, 2025! While we are currently on hiatus, we invite you to enjoy a quarter century of writing and art in our archives.

Click to read any of the pieces featured below, read more from the category, or refresh the page for a fresh selection!

On Literature

Native Guard and Bellocq's Opheli by Natasha Trethewey

Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida

Tom Holmes

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass silence

“Only the Lull I Like”: Walt Whitman’s Image of Silence

Andrew Field

More Essays and Interviews

Poetry

Old Mill Beach / credit: D. Enck

Five poems by Laura McPhee-Browne

Laura McPhee-Browne

logjam

6 poems by Lucas Margarit, translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

Lucas Margarit and Katherine M. Hedeen

More Poetry

Beat Generation

goodbye, ted joans - jack foley

Jack Foley: Goodbye, Ted Joans

Jack Foley

Big Sur - Kerouac

Prelude to Big Sur: Kerouac in Spring & Summer 1960

Paul Maher Jr.

The First Third - Neal Cassady

Who was Neal Cassady?

Empty Mirror

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at Seattle's Hotel Stevens

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at the Hotel Stevens

Gregory Stephenson

More About the Beat Generation

Visual Art

Veiny Cathedral Transaction (detail) - visual poetry by James Knight

Monster: visual poems by James Knight

James Knight

Ms. (detail) - Cassandra Keenan

Seven Portraits of Women

Cassandra Keenan

More Art

Essays

Denise Enck

Marshmallow Forest

Melissa Wiley

The Millstones of History

The Mill Stones of History

Lazar Trubman

More Essays

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!

Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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