''The Gamut'' was a student publication at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

between 1998 and 2017. The magazine was devoted exclusively to poetry. Weekly meetings started with the reading aloud of published poems and continued on to the reading and discussion of student submissions. All poems were considered anonymously, and each had to pass two rounds of voting in order to be published. Although the board of the magazine comprised only a few students, all Harvard undergraduates were welcome to participate in the editorial meetings. To mark the publication of each new issue, ''The Gamut'' held a public reading in which the poets, who published in that issue, read their work. Beginning in the spring of 2006, the editors decided to reserve one half of each issue's content for the winning submission of an annual

chapbook A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...

contest. Traditionally, Harvard has been home to many of the most important American poets, including

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

John Brooks Wheelwright John Brooks Wheelwright (sometimes Wheelright) (September 9, 1897 – September 13, 1940) was an American poet from a Boston Brahmin background. He belonged to the poetic ''avant garde'' of the 1930s and was a Marxist, a founder-member of th ...

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

E. E. Cummings Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was ...

and

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

. Later poets associated with Harvard include

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...

Jorie Graham Jorie Graham (; born May 9, 1950) is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at H ...

and

Peter Sacks Peter M. Sacks (born 1950) is an expatriate South African painter and poet living and working in the United States. Life Sacks was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and grew up in Durban, where he was educated at Clifton School (Durban) ...

. Poetry is also flourishing in the undergraduate community through the work of publications such as ''The Gamut'' and ''

The Harvard Advocate ''The Harvard Advocate'', the art and literary magazine of Harvard College, is the oldest continuously published college art and literary magazine in the United States. The magazine (published then in newspaper format) was founded by Charles ...

'' and popular bookshops like the

Woodberry Poetry Room The George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room is a special collections room of the library system at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview Named for literary critic and poet George Edward Woodberry, the Woodberry Poetry Room was found ...

and the

Grolier Poetry Book Shop The Grolier Poetry Book Shop ("the Grolier") is an independent bookstore on Plympton Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although founded as a "first edition" bookstore, its focus today is solely poetry. A small ...

at Harvard.

References

External links

Official Website of The Gamut

Article on The Gamut's Chapbook ContestArticle on the contemporary poetry scene at Harvard College; mentions The Gamut
Poetry magazines published in the United States Student magazines published in the United States Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Harvard University publications Magazines established in 1998 Magazines disestablished in 2017 Magazines published in Boston {{US-poetry-mag-stub