1990s Eugene literary magazine Emergency Horse rides again

In a newly published interview, Robert Hunter, the poet and lyricist for The Grateful Dead, spoke about his varying approaches to lyrics and poetry, which he described as two different crafts entirely.

But Hunter died in 2019. The interview was done in 1992, for a Eugene-based newsprint magazine of art, poetry and features named Emergency Horse. Hunter changed his mind after he was interviewed and said he didn’t want it to be published until after he died. The magazine stopped printing shortly after that, winding down after two years and seven issues.   

Now, 33 years later, Emergency Horse is back. The Hunter interview was featured in Issue No. 8. Eagle-eyed newsstand watchers of Eugene and Portland may have seen the horses riding in, popping up in coffee shops and bookstores around town. 

Some job titles, responsibilities and aesthetics have changed, as the magazine’s original staff have had entire careers since the ’90s. However, the sensibilities remain consistent, especially its irreverent, Dada taste in poetry and art. But the return comes amid an extended punishing time for magazine publishing, as print products experience a steady, much-discussed decline and online publications jockey for diminishing search traffic and frenetic social media views. 

Now, Emergency Horse is seeking submissions and staff and plans to publish two or so issues a year. It broke even on publishing and advertising revenue for Issue No. 8. 

Though it’s primarily a print magazine, its editors have launched a Substack for online publishing in between issues. However, the return to print was intentional. 

“It feels like it’s needed more,” said EH’s top editor, Howard Libes. “Physical magazines are kind of disappearing. Even though we’re on Substack, we wanted to do a physical magazine. It felt like there was a void, especially in the Northwest, for what we’re doing.”

Getting back in the saddle

Two years ago, Libes was on a visit to Europe and stopped in Berlin to visit fellow former Emergency Horse veteran Scott Taylor, who had moved across the Atlantic. 

“We walked into this bookstore, and the front part was all magazines published by people,” Libes said. “Scott turned to me and said, ‘You know, we need to do Emergency Horse again.’”

Libes, now 62, is also a science fiction novelist, and said that when he was done with the third book in his trilogy, he would focus on the magazine’s revival. But in spring 2024, EH founding member Curt Hopkins died, which Libes said gave the mission more urgency. (Hopkins is still present in the pages; the new issue of Emergency Horse includes writing from Hopkins.)

The Emergency Horse masthead now is a triumvirate of the people who made it up in the 1990s: Libes, poetry editor Darrin Daniel and Taylor, who first worked as business manager and now designs the magazine after a career in graphic design.  

“AI is creeping in on the edges of my field, and obviously it’s going to affect people who are doing illustration and photography first,” Taylor said, expressing hope for what a human-designed Emergency Horse could mean to people. “There’s going to be people who still appreciate an actual illustration, an actual photograph that was taken in particular for a story.”

Three decades prior, the editors first joined together as a collective of post-grad literary types. Many were involved with or friends with members of Eugene’s then-active Big Time Poetry Theatre but wanted a publication of their own. 

Much of the magazine’s punch-above-its-weight poetry was because of Daniel, a graduate of the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The faculty included Beat poet legend Allen Ginsberg, and Daniel was able to publish a friend’s interview with the “Howl” scribe. A correspondence with Charles Bukowski led to Daniel running some of his then-unpublished poetry in EH.

Daniel, whose interview with The Grateful Dead lyricist Hunter published in Issue No. 8, said returning to EH is an embrace of the art, poetry and literature muscle memory he had missed since his 20s. 

“There was this communal, ‘We’re getting the band back together,’ kind of energy,” Daniel said. “As ‘Spinal Tap II’ is coming out, I’m laughing to myself, ‘Wow, this feels like us.’”