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

Howl by Allen Ginsberg / Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko / Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich.

Cry, Exploration, Ceremony

Winnie Khaw

More Essays and Interviews

Poetry

containers / credit: em

Broken Glosa: an alphabet book of post avant glosa by Stephen Bett

Stephen Bett

overland

Civilization’s Lost: Poems by Jeff Bagato

Jeff Bagato

More Poetry

Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac - The Sea is My Brother

Addendum to “Lost Letter Found”

Paul Maher Jr.

BEAT The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, A First-Hand Account - Andy Clausen

Beat: The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, A First-Hand Account by Andy Clausen

Marc Olmsted

A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Eric D. Lehman

Tristessa by Jack Kerouac, book cover

Book Review — Tristessa by Jack Kerouac

Eric D. Lehman

More About the Beat Generation

Visual Art

Australian Artist Paints the War in Afghanistan

David Ackley

Jason Stoneking - Death to the Rebirth

Death to the Rebirth!

Jason Stoneking

More Art

Essays

The Baby in the Air

Max King Cap

daydream on the forest pond / credit: de

The Pointless Forest

Emily O'Neill

More Essays

The EM newsletter

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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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