The Reaper was a United States literary periodical which played an important role in establishing the poetry movements of New Narrative and New Formalism. It was founded in 1980[1] and ran until 1989;[2] a double issue of numbers 19 and 20 was the last. The Reaper was founded and edited by Robert McDowell and Mark Jarman.[3] It was started at Indiana State University.[4] For the earlier issues the art director was Michael K. Aakhus; for later issues Thomas Wilhelmus served as fiction editor.
Donald Hall contributed a review of the first ten issues in Issue 10. The piece was entitled 'Reaping the Reaper'. His first paragraph runs: "Most poems in the first ten issues of The Reaper are bad. Many are bad in familiar ways."[5] But he went on to say the magazine "is an encouraging phenomenon because it howls with dissatisfaction."[6]