“Yes, after 76 years, Robin’s Books will close forever at the end of 2012. We are grateful to all of those worthy souls who have patronized us throughout the years, all of the poets, philosophers, scholars, students, and seekers of all stripes.”

Even if you don’t know or particularly care about Robin’s Books, I encourage you to at least read their “About” page, where you’ll learn how Larry Robin continued a bookstore founded by his grandfather, and what Robin thinks the role of the indie bookstore is in the community. I don’t want to harp on the “this is what you’re losing” we hear so often with such bookstore closings, but instead, how about just a nod of appreciation for what folks like Robin have done (and what so many continue to do).

“What It is I Do: I sell books. The written record of thoughts and feelings and facts. This is the primary way in which humankind communicates. There is history, where we come from and what we have done. There is poetry, taking us beyond facts into our feelings. There are novels, exploring our experiences and sharing our successes and failures. Contrary to popular belief, this is not just product. A independent book store is by its nature, a community center and the book seller is an educator. Our job is to help our customers find what they are looking for. All of us are looking for the Truth. Of course, our customers do not always know that. You need to analyze where each customer is, find what they are looking for and figure out how you can help them take the next step.” Larry Robin

Thank you, Larry. I hope there is some way this is able to continue in our communities. Some way.

PEN America‘s newest issue time travels back to 1922, the magazine’s founding year and the height of modernism. “Borrowing from the pages of The Dial, The Crisis, and The Little Review,” says the magazine, “we offer you a taste of the literary scene, alongside a trove of photographs, drawings, advertisements, headlines, and commentary. The featured writers—including Joyce, Du Bois, Woolf, McKay, Crane, Cather, Fitzgerald, Mansfield, and Moore—remain some of our greatest teachers and literary loves.”

In an introduction to the special section, Steven L. Isenberg, PEN America Center’s executive director, says, “This year we celebrate PEN’s ninetieth anniversary and hence our origins and our emergence after World War II and unto today as a literary human rights organization devoted to the protection of free expression and as a standard-bearer for the place of literature and thus the ties that bind, internationally, through reading, writing, translation, and fellowship. When we turn to the literature of 1922 in the pages ahead, we begin the journey once again.”

Writers featured within the pages of the rest of the journal include Jamal Joseph & Sonia Sanchez, Julie Otsuka, Herta Mϋller, Liu Xiaobo & Liu Xia, John Cage, Kimiko Hahn, Theresa Rebeck, Etgar Keret, Eileen Myles, and Richard Feynman.

As part of its 30th anniversary, Alaska Quarterly Review celebrates with a special section in the latest issue that features three sections of invited poetry. Jane Hirshfield, guest editor, explains: “In one, you will find 30 previously published poems by poets familiar to any awake reader of contemporary literature. Many included in this section have also served as previous guest editors for AQR, all of whom were invited to contribute. I wrote to each of the thirty in this section and asked for a single, previously published poem, of their own choosing – sometimes describing it as a kind of tribute bouquet, meant for both the magazine and its readers. The resulting contributions are not bouquet in scale, though, they are continental. They range from signature poems – Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” – to poems that first appeared in print in the past year, from publications ranging from The New Yorker to the online journal Clade Song.”

“To expand this special issue beyond my own range of knowledge and taste, Ron and I decided to invite in also two exceptional, and somewhat younger, poets, Camille Dungy and Todd Boss, to guest edit a second section of another 30 poems – in this case holding new work, previously unpublished, from a mix of poets.”

Writers among the pages of the rest of the issue include Lenore Myka, Jenny Hanning, Amy Sayre-Roberts, Victoria Kelly, Katherine Heiny, Victoria Lancelotta, Nicole Miller, Laura Jok, Dina Nayeri, Kirk Perry, Eva Saulitis, Francesca Mari, Sandra Kobrin, and Jesse Goolsby.

The Feminist Press has released a ebook edition of Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom with profits from the sale of the book going to support the Pussy Riot legal defense team.

Following the February 21, 2012 staged performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and subsequent arrest of several band members, “the Internet exploded with petitions, music videos, and calls to action, and as the guilty verdict was anticipated, Pussy Riot responded with articulate, unwavering courtroom statements, calling for freedom of expression, an end to economic and gender oppression, and a separation of church and state. They were sentenced to two years in prison, and inspired a global movement. Collected here are the words that roused the world.”

A print edition is forthcoming.

Citing a need to “navigate the changes in market conditions for print publications,” American Short Fiction is taking a “temporary hiatus” in order to “seek the best way forward” as well as “other organizational changes” for publication publisher, Badgerdog. Read the full press release here.

The most recent issue of Saranac Review makes room for a special section of poetry about Black Poetry Day. “For almost thirty years, SUNY-Plattsburgh has been home to an annual celebration of Black Poetry Day. The event was first established by Stanley Ransom, a librarian from the Town of Huntington, Long Island, in1970. Its purpose is to recognize the contributors of Black poets to American life and culture and to honor Jupiter Hammon, the first African-American to publish his own verse,” says Alexis Levitin, co-host of Black Poetry Day and poetry editor of the magazine.

Poetry in this section comes from five of the Black Poetry Day celebrants: E. Ethelbert Miller, Gretna Wilkinson, Charles Fort, Marilyn Nelson, and Tony Medina.

Reminiscent of one of the buildings on the campus of Goddard College—a symbol for the college and the independent spirit of being part of its learning environment—comes the name of a brand new magazine: Clockhouse Review. Published by Tim Kenyon and managed by Editor Chris Mackowski, this annual print magazine prints fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama (for both stage and screen), comics, and graphic narratives. “Readers will find a collection of work in various genres from strong, independent voices,” says Kenyon.

Their mission statement is as follows: “Dare. Risk. Dream. Share. Ruminate. How do we understand our place in the world, our responsibility to it, and our responsibility to each other? Clockhouse Review is an eclectic conversation about the work-in-progress of life—a soul arousal, a testing ground, a new community, a call for change. Join in.”

Writers and artists from the first issue include Sean Bernard, Arthur Levine, Will Donnelly, Robert McGuill, Mira Martin-Parker, Ian Couch, Hunter Huskey, Tina Tocco, Elizabeth Dalton, Lisa Braxton, David Ritchie, Barbara Ridley, Jan Shoemaker, Louise Deretchin, Mike Mosher, Sara Backer, Joe Lauinger, Paul David Adkins, Lynnel Jones, Leslie Paolucci, Jeffrey MacLachlan, Lisa Mangini, Valerie Macon, Steve Klepetar, Timothy Martin, Ron Riekki, Thomas Piekarski, Matthew Thorburn, John Grey, Steve West, Gabrielle Freeman, Jenn Blair, Lauren Nicole Nixon, Franklin Mulkey, Genevieve Betts, Ruth Bavetta, Gerald Solomon, Billy Reynolds, Russell Rowland, Cecilia Llompart, Leslie Heywood, Nicole Santalucia, Virginia Shank, Marissa Schwalm, and Charles Davenport.

While the goal at the moment is to publish annually, Kenyon expresses that they have the potential to become a biannual journal. “We will be featuring the work of well-known, established writers as featured contributors with each upcoming issue,” he says.

Plume, an online magazine, has just printed its 2012 poetry anthology which includes work from the first six issues, each of which includes twelve poems. In a forward by Ron Slate, he says “The Internet, home to Plume, supposedly has the legs to make its digital contents accessible in perpetuity, but if [Editor] Daniel Lawless should fail to pay his server invoice, Plume would vanish. So he is taking no chances. Petroleum-based print is his back-up medium.”

“The first volume of collected Plume also includes new unpublished work from additional poets, and a special feature on the work of the Dutch poet M. Vasalis, translated by David Young and Fred Lessing.”

Great radio program on The Bob Edwards Show: The Day Carl Sandburg Died. Edwards talks to Paul Bonesteel – documentary writer, editor and director of the film The Day Carl Sandburg died, which airs Monday, September 24 on PBS stations  as part of the American Masters series (check your local listings).

The Day Carl Sandburg Died tells the life story of the populist poet. Sandburg was known for bringing Chicago, “the city of the big shoulders,” to life in his writings and for his close associations with socialism. Carl Sandburg won two Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, and one for his multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.

This special issue of Light is dedicated to John Mella (December 12, 1941 – April 16, 2012), the previous editor. With this John Mella Memorial Double Issue comes the end of Light‘s print presence. “The transition has proven harder than any of us had hoped, of course. The loss of John last spring still hurts. Meanwhile, finances make it impossible to sustain the magazine in the form we’re all familiar with,” says Melissa Balmain. “The good news, though, is that along with the rest of Light‘s new, volunteer crew, I’m determined to make sure light verse still has a dedicated home in this country. The best way for that to happen, we’ve realized, is to move the magazine online. We believe this will allow Light to attract more fans than ever before.”

She notes that they hope to make the online version as easy on the eyes as possible and to print an occasional “best of” edition. She said they will still accept submissions the “old-fashioned way” via snail mail, however.

“It’s a real honor to be picking up where John left off. I’m immeasurably grateful to him, Lisa Markwart, Margarita Walters and Thomas Gorman, and to the many donors, directors, advisors and others who have served the magazine so well these past 20 years.”

In addition to work by Mella, there is writing in this issue from Dominic Martia, Charles Ghigna, Max Gutmann, Mary Meriam, Phillip T. Egelston, Henry Harlan, Daniel W. Galef, and Dan Campion.

The fall issue of The Iowa Review—whose cover features a boat adorned with oversized shrimp, “jumbo shrimp,” if you will—is titled “The Food Issue. Er, Non-Food Issue.” Noting that they don’t normally put out themed issues, Editor Russell Scott Valentino says that the issue, at first, wasn’t intended to be themed but happened as a result of several of the submissions including Meenakshi Gigi Durham’s essay, “Hunger Pangs,” Ayse Papatya Bucak’s short story “Iconography,” Elizabeth Cullen Dunn’s “A Gift from the American People,” and Naomi Kimbell’s esssay “Bounty.”

“For most magazines,” Valentino writes, “the idea of a Food Issue conjures up sumptuous color spreads, aspirational recipes, accounts of treks around the world to sample the most exotic repasts. But since TIR isn’t mandated to promote the quest for consumer bliss, but rather given the freedom to seek out and present a much wider slice of human experience, our Food Issue could perhaps more accurately be called the Non-Food Issue. Or the Hunger Issue. And our answer to the lavish four-color spread is Erin Carnes’s photographic series Digesting Dystopia, in which idealized images of plants, animals, and agriculture roost amid more disturbing views of the modern food production and consumption industries. Yet, despite the dark themes one would expect from a Hunger Issue, each of the pieces mentioned above also hints at the plenitude of Kimbell’s title: a spoonful of honey that provides a taste of home for war refugees, a bumper crop of Roma tomatoes at the food bank, the ‘chicken-butt soup’ Durham’s future husband teaches her to cook as they fall in love.”

Featured writers in this issue include Zach Savich, Kimberly Elkins, Eleanor Stanford, Tomaž Šalamun, Wendy S. Walters, and Stephanie Ford.

“The pieces in this issue,” says Valentino, “whether about food or other human hungers, remind us of privation and unmet desires but also of unexpected sources of abundance, including the ones in our own lives.

Each year Millay Colony for the Arts invites 52 visual artists, writers and composers for a colony residency. Residents are chosen anonymously by a panel of jurors in each discipline. The application process is competitive and based solely on on the merit of the artist statement and work sample. Past jurors and their bios can be viewed on the Juries page. An article on the jury process can also be found in the Millay Colony Spring 2008 newsletter.

The Millay Colony has announced that, starting this year, they are adding three new offerings to their roster of artist residencies on its upstate New York/Berkshire area campus. While continuing to offer month-long residencies to visual artists, writers and composers, the Millay Colony is now offering three new ways to spend time as a resident: Two-week Residencies in the month of September, Virtual Residencies and Group Residencies.

Next Application Deadline: October 1, 2012

September 29, 2012 marks the second annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots organization that brings poets, artists and musicians (new this year) together to call for environmental, social, and political change, within the framework of peace and sustainability. The local focus is key to this global event as communities around the world raise their voices through concerts, readings, workshops, flash mobs and demonstrations that speak to the heart of their specific area of concerns, such as homelessness, ecocide, racism and censorship.

“Peace and sustainability is a major concern worldwide, and the guiding principle for this global event,” said Michael Rothenberg, Co-Founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. “We are in a world where it isn’t just one issue that needs to be addressed. A common ground is built through this global compilation of local stories, which is how we create a true narrative for discourse to inform the future.”

Organizers and participants are hoping through their actions and events to seize and redirect the political and social dialogue of the day and turn the narrative of civilization towards peace and sustainability. Those that want to get involved can visit www.100tpc.org to find an event near them or sign up to organize one in their area.

There are nearly 700 events planned worldwide, including:

• 25 different events in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, with live poetry readings by Beat Legend Michael McClure, former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass and other major poets

• The Occupy Wall Street Poetry group kicks off a weekend of events in New York City with a poetry reading at the famous St. Mark’s Poetry Project

• Peace On Streets, R.O.A.D., Tasker Elite and SHARP will host performance artists, poets, musicians, hip hop artists and various youth and parent groups who will perform and lead workshops throughout Philadelphia to bring awareness to the ongoing problem of street violence in their city

• Wordstock, a 3 day festival at the Bamboo Arts and Celebration Center in De Leon Springs, FL, will include poetry slams, concerts, and an art exhibition focusing on images of war and peace

• In New Orleans, a blues festival featuring ten bands will help raise funds for medical care for aging musicians

• In Jamaica a week long Street Dub Vibe series called “Tell the Children the Truth” will include concerts, spoken word performances, art exhibits, lectures, and workshops to bring attention to the damaging culture of secrecy and denial surrounding the abuse, poverty and illiteracy impacting the nation’s children and destroying their future.

• Poetry and peace gatherings are planned in the strife-torn cities of Kabul and Jalalabad, Afghanistan

• In Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, poets, musicians and mime artists, in response to the revolution in Egypt and the major changes taking place in the Arab World, will perform in public spaces and theaters and explore new ways to communicate their concerns, and their roles as artists, in influencing the future of their country

• In Volos, Greece, there will be 5 days of poetry and music events, including an exhibition of photography looking at the new phenomenon of homelessness in Greece

• An event in Blackpool, England will celebrate activist poets and writers of past generations through a special performance of Bullets and Daffodils, a play about the life of peace poet Wilfred Owen

100 Thousand Poets for Change began in Sonoma County, Calif. The official Headquarters’ Event will take place at the Arlene Francis Center in downtown Santa Rosa and will feature poetry readings, group meditations, workshops, and music and dance of various styles including hip hop, flamenco, African drums, reggae, salsa, folk and more. The HQ event will also live-stream other 100 Thousand Poets for Change events worldwide. This 3-day event is sponsored by the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Arts Council.

Immediately following September 29th, all documentation on the 100TPC.org website, which will include specific event pages with photos, video and other documentation compiled by each city coordinator, will be preserved by Stanford University in California. Stanford recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change in 2011 as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history. They will continue to archive the complete contents of 100TPC.org, as part of their digital archiving program LOCKSS.

About 100 Thousand Poets for Change

Co-Founder Michael Rothenberg is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California. Terri Carrion is a poet, translator, photographer, and editor and visual designer for BigBridge.org.

ZZYZZYVA, a magazine that has “defined its regional character with a longstanding dedication to publishing writers, artists, poets, and translators who live on the West Coast.” In the editor’s note of the most recent issue, Laura Cogan writes, “As many of us have sensed at one time or another, the West Coast is more than a region. It is a state of mind, an experience you carry with you, wherever else life leads.”

“In this wider context, we’re compelled to note the continuing contributions to this literary conversation by those who’ve passed through the region and left their mark. With this issue we launch the debut of a new special section titled ‘Expats.” Here you’ll find poetry and literature by West Coast writers whose work or lives have now drawn them, for the time being, eastward.”

Writers featured in this new “Expats” section are John Freeman, Dagoberto Gilb, Edie Meidav, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Other writers in the issue include Brian Boies, Gilad Elbom, Jane Gilliette, Tom

Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.

Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.

The resulting letter-sized pdf is designed to be downloaded and printed by anyone with a computer and printer. The goal is to create something both gorgeous and cheap, to put words and art on the streets.

The site contains a gallery of past broadsides, a map of cities/state/countries that have been broadsided (and where you can add yours), and links to other broadside sites.

Staple guns and duct tape to the ready – time to get your city on the map!

[Pictured: September 2012 Broadside: “Dhanaivi at 16 in the South Bronx,” writing by Dolan Morgan, art by Sarah Van Sanden]

There are many names out there to describe very short fiction—sudden, flash, nano, short-short, micro, minificción—but how is it classified? Are these very short stories still considered stories? Is this genre a “renaissance or a reinvention?” In “The Remarkable Reinvention of Very Short Fiction,” in World Literature Today‘s most recent issue, Robert Shapard takes a look at these questions.

“Very short fiction has many names,” he writes, “which vary by length of story and by country. In the United States, the most popular name, perhaps, is flash; in Latin America, the micro. On average, a very short fiction is ten times shorter than a traditional story, but numbers don’t tell us everything.” Later in the essay, Shapard says, “As Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler (a novelist who also writes flash fiction) has said, ‘Fiction is the art form of human yearning, no matter how long or short that work of fiction is.’ I agree with Butler. It’s a matter of focus.”

This essay introduces a special feature in WLT of “very short fiction.” “These works, by eleven authors from ten countries, take many forms and range in length from sudden (about two pages) to flash (about a page) to micro (less than half a page).”

This special section includes stories from Carmen Boullosa, Hisham Bustani, Alex Epstein, Vanessa Gebbie, Josefine Klougart, Sylvia Petter, Nora Nadjarian, Andrés Neuman, Lili Potpara, and Clemens Setz.

A special THANKS to Brendan McBreen with the Striped Water Poets for organizing this year’s August Poetry Postcard Festival! According to his post, 160 people signed up to participate this year, with 16 from outside the US (Canada, UK, India, Singapore, South Korea, Ireland, Germany, and Tasmania Australia).

I was eager to get the mail each day and pleased to have received some really beautiful poems as well as postcards from all over the US and two from Germany. In all, I received 23 postcards and a few more may still find their way here.

I honestly enjoyed every poem I read. We are asked to dash these off and not revise or rewrite them, and that has some wary about participating. Linda H. from Germany noted on her card, “I hate sending rough drafts, but I just have enough time to write one each day and not revise. Still, it gets me writing again and this postcard project is fun.” And the poem she sent me, “Words,” complete with a scribble or two, was brilliant. She’s right: it can be unnerving. At the same time, taking the risk gets us writing, not worrying about a poem being “good,” and sharing our writing with others with no fear of negative feedback.

I’d love to mention all the poems I received, but here are just a few:

Nonie Sharpe of Port Angeles, seeing where I lived, wrote a poem about Michigan, noting “Memories of our Ann Arbor days.”

From Phillip Brown: “Colors and verbs were selected from a list and paired at random to serve as a starting point (inspiration) for the poems in this project.” Great idea! The poem he wrote for me was inspired by “lavender” and “flinch.”

Catherine Giodano created a found poetry piece from newsprint and regularly blogs such work here.

Emma Bolden created her own intricately detailed pen/ink drawings for the postcards. Beautiful.

All of the cards were uplifting to receive and fun to read, re-read, share out loud with others, and use to inspire my own writing.

This is the fifth year I’ve participated to the end: I did complete all 32 poems (we were asked to take an extra participant). This August Poetry Postcard Festival really fires me up each year. It gets me actively engaged in thinking “poetry” throughout my day as I look for what I might pen to a card when I have a moment, or forces me to just sit and write to get it done and in the mail.

When the month is over, that last card sent, I feel a bit sad. I try to carry on the motivation to keep writing and reading poetry regularly, but as the year wears on, I find other activities taking precedence. I use this postcard festival as a way to ‘re-center’ the importance of poetry in my life and look forward to August each year to help me do this.

I hope Brendan (or someone) will generously take the time to organize this next year. And I hope at least 30 others feel the same way and sign on to participate. I certainly do appreciate it.