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

Poetry as a Last Letter: Thomas James and his Influences Sylvia Plath and Georg Trakl by Lauren Davis

Poetry as a Last Letter: Thomas James and his Influences Sylvia Plath and Georg Trakl

Lauren Davis

Allen Ginsberg photo by Larry Keenan / Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: A Story of Influences

Alexandre Ferrere

More Essays and Interviews

Poetry

Skagit farm / credit: em

3 poems from The Beauty of being Hated by Jack Leaf Willetts

Jade Leaf Willetts

actual size collage (detail) - Steve Dalachinsky

Five poems and four collages by Steve Dalachinsky

Steve Dalachinsky

More Poetry

Beat Generation

How Hip Was My Alley by Kenton Crowther

Review – Alleycats and Beatsters: The Hip, the Gone, and the Way Gone

Denise Enck

William Burroughs, portrait by Graziano Origa, pen & ink, 1997

Junk Nightmares

Lee Watkins

Railroad Earth - Photo is Road to Nowhere by Blue Betty via http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bluebetty, photoshopped by Empty Mirror

October in the Railroad Earth – Jack Kerouac

Empty Mirror

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia book review

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia, reviewed by Kevin Riordan

Kevin Riordan

More About the Beat Generation

Visual Art

Fighting Chance (detail) - LIta Kenyon

All These Sensations: 11 artworks by Lita Kenyon

Lita Kenyon

Wash Up (detail) photo by Braxton Younts

Shelter me! A photo essay by Braxton Younts

Braxton Younts

More Art

Essays

Sara Coleridge

My Coleridge: On Five Poems by Sara Coleridge

Stephanie Limb

Alison Winfield-Burns memoir

(Part IV) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir

Alison Winfield Burns

More Essays

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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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