DOUBLY MAD

Doubly Mad is an annual literary and visual arts journal published by The Other Side of Utica, Inc. with support through granting organizations and our readers. Our aim is to publish excellent poetry, fiction, essays and visual art, with an emphasis on people working and living in Central New York, though not to the exclusion of our neighbors throughout the U.S. and around the world. 



The project has grown since then, but our mission remains to foster artists wherever they may live and work by providing them with an in-print venue to share the results of their efforts and imaginations. About Doubly Mad, Kim wrote:

“The hermit [of Bly’s poem “Listening”] does not counsel escape or shopping or antidepressants or ‘living well is the best revenge,’ the popular responses to the pain and madness of the world. The madness is a fact...[But, the world] is where we can sing our own song or plant our own small business, restoring life to human scale. Doubling the madness suggests a healing, not a cure. Through this journal, we hope to entertain, provoke, amuse, inspire...In dark times it’s important not just to light candles, but to understand the fire didn’t really go out, you wandered off somewhere! Doubly Mad hopes to inspire the outsider in everyone and to honor the insider as well; and to contribute, in our way, to relearning the art of living locally; to reclaiming liberal arts and the humanities for everyone, enlarging the conversation, and expanding the range of our listening.”   


It is our conviction that art is a modus vivendi which everyone has the ability to pursue in their own fashion, whether on a “professional” level or for “personal satisfaction.”  We disagree with the commonly held view that “art is useless.” On the contrary, our view is that devotion to an art is one of the surest ways, perhaps the only way, to liberate oneself from the top-down hegemony of our society, both in its overt and subtle manifestations, because devotion to an art begins with an assertion of an individual’s experience. To create requires a person to open, at least partially, to an intuitive self, which can instigate opportunities for reflection, self and social scrutiny, as well as celebration, mourning, humor — the gambit, essentially, of human experience.  


The result is a deepening knowledge and acceptance of oneself, and a deepening knowledge of our neighbors. The danger to any social structure which depends on complicity and obedience, which depends on consumption of ready-made products, is real. To anyone cynical of our position, we only ask one question: why are repressive authorities so eager to control or silence artists if art and art-making is such an ineffective endeavor? 

Masthead:

William Welch             
Colleen Doody          
Ruth Ann Dandrea
Mary Katherine Moylan     

For general questions, or to inquire about an order, email us at: doublymadjournal@gmail.com

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