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

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Wankers, Burds, and Skag: Heteroglossia in Trainspotting

Stacey Mankoff

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

More Essays and Interviews

Poetry

eleven / image: em

Three Dream Poems by Z.G. Tomaszewski

Z.G. Tomaszewski

credit: Romain Gille

Two poems by Alan Chazaro

Alan Chazaro

More Poetry

Beat Generation

Allen Ginsberg

Celebrating Allen Ginsberg’s birthday with a few videos

Denise Enck

Ted Joans WOW sun logo

Ted Joans Lives! Coreley Coit, Kenya Rodriguez, Valery Oisteanu, Hidani Ditmars

Empty Mirror

Ted Joans Lives!

Ted Joans Lives! A Tribute

Empty Mirror

A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Eric D. Lehman

More About the Beat Generation

Visual Art

Frustrated Fisherman Bridges Chasm (detail) - Jesse M. Bell watercolor

13 poetic watercolors by Jesse M. Bell

Jesse M. Bell

Caelestis (detail) - Anna Carina Sinocchi

The Roman Arch: paintings by Anna Carina Sinocchi

Anna Carina Sinocchi

More Art

Essays

Art has side effects, I said - Bobbi Lurie - Marcel Duchamp

“Art has side effects,” I said.

Bobbi Lurie

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/zeroy/5673872877/ Roy Ubu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ CC-NC-ND

Irishry

John O'Kane

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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