E was the name of a periodic journal which Marshall Reese co-edited and co-published with composer Gene Carl. The name was taken from the vowel from cognate words in Indo-European languages – meaning to go, to fly, to be in transition and the publication was an attempt to unite the worlds of poetry and music. This LP is the third number of E magazine. It has taken over 40 years to be published and documents influences that reached Marshall Reese via Charles Amirkhanian in the 70s and early 80s. According to Reese his generation was “at the forefront of an expansion of literacy combining indigenous poetries, graphics, still and moving images, recorded words, music and sound, an oral/aural culture experiencing poetry and music as synaesthesia”.

Curated by Marshall Reese selections of this record cover the many different aspects of sound poetry in relation to sound art and include Hannah Weiner’s multi-voice reading of her Clairvoyant Journal; Jackson Mac Low’s Vocabulary Gatha (both Hannah and Jackson were associated with Language writing); Steve McCaffery of the Four Horsemen and Toronto Research Group (one of the organizers of the Toronto Sound Poetry Festival); the Irrepressible Bastards, sound and performance project of cris cheek and Lawrence Upton; CoAccident, the poetry performance group Reese was part of in Baltimore; the flautist Greta Monach, composer Vladan Radovanovic and finally a text sound composition of Gene Carl.