Triptych Haiku, an online journal in publication since October 2005, is looking for editors to join their team. For more information, visit Kevin Doran’s blog page: New Editorial Team at Triptych Haiku.

The Poetry at Noon Reading Series at the Library of Congress seeks submissions for the 2007-08 season. To apply, pick one or two themes from among these: “Magic and Magicians” (reading Oct. 9), “Love Poems (reading Feb 12), or Family Names and Nicknames (reading April 22). Include a cover sheet with the theme as the title; list your name, address, phone, and email; include a one-paragraph bio. Submit 2 of your own poems on the theme and 3 by other poets. Open to poets who have not read in the series in the past 3 years. Deadline: July 15 (postmarked). Send to: Patricia Gray, Library of Congress, Poetry and Literature Center, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20540-4861.

Let’s REVIEW
Publications that help readers navigate (and evaluate) the indie press
by Danielle Maestretti
UTNE Reader, July/August 2007

“NewPages is the web’s alt-press playground. It’s tough to stop by for a quick visit; you may go for the reviews, but you’ll stay for the guides, with pages upon pages of links to alternative magazines, small book publishers, and independent bookstores…”

To read more, pick up the latest issue of UTNE Reader – or better yet – SUBSCRIBE!

Upstreet publisher (Vivian) provides an intense three-part blog on literary magazine distribution woes, and calls out DeBoer for unethical behavior, but not without fairly assessing the why and what she has chosen to do about it. Lit mags looking for distribution may want to take close note: The Upstreet Fan Club blog

babel, an online journal promoting freedom of speech, is seeking poems, short stories, essays or interviews touching on the broad themes of identity and culture. Submissions are welcomed year-round.

From the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal
Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche

After a six year hiatus, The Prague Revue will resume publishing regularly in 2007! The revue will continue to promote the best of the Prague literary scene while establishing an outlet for international writers to publish their work in Central Europe.

CROSSING LIMITS is a community outreach project of both the American Muslim and American Jewish Communities. It invites poets who locate themselves within the broad cultural, secular and/or religious contexts of the Muslim and Jewish communities to submit original poetry for an upcoming anthology. There are no subject matter restrictions. Previously published poems are acceptable IF author owns rights or provides permission statement(s). Simultaneous submissions are also accepted. Please paste 1-5 poems as text into the body of an e-mail to:CrossingLimits2(at)aol.com(replace (at) with @) OR submit by land mail to: Crossing Limits, P. O. Box 81268, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. Deadline: September 30, 2007.

“There’s nothing quite like a good quiz, but they’ve become intensely problematic in this age of instantaneous Internet content. Google and Wikipedia are pirate-coves for the lazy and the cheatful, and so the monthly Open Letters quiz will rely entirely on the honor system: readers are expected to rely on their memories alone. And no quiz would be complete without incentive! The first reader to respond with the highest number of correct answers will receive a book in the mail, courtesy of the editors at Open Letters.” Take the quiz on Open Letters – and let us know if you win (esp. since I couldn’t get past the first question!).

Education Ordeal
by Dena Rashed
Al-Ahram Weekly, June 28 – July 4, 2007

“Looking at Sahar Zakaria, a mother of two, you’d think she was the one taking the thanawiya amma (TA) exams. It’s actually her daughter. For two years now Zakaria has been following up on her daughter’s studies, making sure she does her work and, well, worrying. For her part Heba Khaled, said daughter, is significantly more relaxed: “I’ve been TA mode for two years, I’m sort of used to its kind of stress by now.” But having obtained an average grade of 64 per cent last year, Khaled is already aware that her state-university options are already limited…”

Read more on Al-Ahram Weekly

I received this correspondence in response to my letter writing to express concern for the fate of the small press if postal rate hikes were to go into effect. Bottom line is: rates went up, and the “incentive” the postal service means to provide is a euphemism for “screw ’em.” Any publishers/small press folks out there want to respond – please write me and I’ll post commentary here – maybe I’m way off on this, and we’ll all be just fine…

(Oh, and my favorite part of this was undergoing gender reassignment…)

***

UNITED STATES
POSTAL SERVICE

June 12, 2007

Mr. Denise R. Hill
Editor
NewPages
Post Office Box 1580
Bay City, Ml 48706-1580

Dear Mr. Hill:

This responds to your recent letter to Postmaster General John E. Potter concerning the approved rate increase for Periodicals.

While most United Postal Service price changes and new mailing standards went into effect on May 14, 2007 (including the 41-cent price for First Class Mail stamps), the Postal Service Board of Governors delayed the implementation of new Periodical prices and mailing standards until July 15, 2007. The delay will give mailers and the Postal Service more time to prepare for the new pricing structure recommended by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The United Postal Service has proposed revisions to the Periodical (magazine and newspaper) portion of its mailing standards that will accompany the new Periodical pricing that will go into effect on July 15, 2007. Periodical mailers will have new incentives to use efficient containers and bundles, and copalletization (publishers/printers merging bundles from separate publications or titles on the same pallet) becomes a permanent offering to encourage more publishers to combine mailings.

You may visit our website at www.usps.com for the proposed revised standards. This site also contains rate charts and other helpful information for mailers.

You can be assured that we will continue our efforts to keep our cost as low as possible while continuing to provide the American public with consistent, reliable, and economical mail service.

Sameatria Morton
Consumer Research Analyst
Reference: HQ31719362

***

Is it just me, or does “copalletization” sound smutty?

“Human Rights Watch is the largest human rights organization based in the United States. Human Rights Watch researchers conduct fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in all regions of the world.”

Recent Photo Essays:
Gay Rights Under Attack in Russia
Wal-Mart Denies Workers Basic Rights
Iran: Release Women’s Rights Advocates
Sri Lanka – Karuna Group Abducts Children for Combat
…and dozens more archived.

Recent HRW Publications available online, print, or as .pdf download:
Indiscriminate Fire: Palestinian Rocket Attacks on Israel and Israeli Artillery Shelling in the Gaza Strip
Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines
Unfinished Business: Serbia’s War Crimes Chamber
The Poisoned Chalice: A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper on the Decision of the Iraqi High Tribunal in the Dujail Case
Bottom of the Ladder
Exploitation and Abuse of Girl Domestic Workers in Guinea
…and many, many more.

Visit Speechless: Straight out of L.A.—the oddest little literary magazine on the Web

Suzanne Lummis invited a select group of poets to “name their ten favorite movies—or twelve, or seven, or fifteen, or however many they had…” with the resulting opinion that “now we know how different the Top Grossing Movies of all Times list would look if poets would just spend more money attending the ones of their choice—or, if the world had more poets. No Titanic, no Star Wars sequels, no Passion of the Christ…”

Each poet is given their own page on which the movies are listed and comments noted. Some of the poets include: John Allman, Ellen Bass, Wanda Colean, Allen Ginsberg, Terence Hayes, Philip Levine, Judith Taylor, and a couple dozen more.

Visit: Poet’s Favorite Movies

Michael Moore’s Sicko
by Christopher Hayes
The Nation
Posted June 27, 2007 (July 16, 2007 issue)

“In what may be a tacit acknowledgment of this unfortunate fact, Sicko is different from Moore’s last two efforts. Not just because of an absence of gimmicky gotcha moments, or a reduction in screen time for Moore himself, but because its topic isn’t fundamentally polarizing in the way his previous works were. There’s a whole lot of Americans who love their guns, and in 2004 there were a lot of Americans who loved their President, but it’s pretty hard to find anyone who loves their health insurance company.”

Read the rest at The Nation

Hip-Hop Dogmatism and Potential Problems for Political Organizing
by Matthew Birkhold
June 8, 2007

“Over the last few months hip-hop has been under attack in the mainstream media. However, the political hip-hop community (PHHC) — a group comprised of socially conscious hip-hop fans, grassroots activists, prominent hip-hop generation artists and intellectuals — has not been silenced. We have defended hip-hop from outside and feel confident in our defense. Unfortunately, most of our attempts to defend hip-hop have deflected valid criticisms of the music and culture. In response, this essay argues that being hip-hop is often a roadblock to intellectual honesty and hinders political organizing by allowing us to deflect critique.”

Read the rest on Wiretap

Winter of Different Directions Blog/Podcast
by Steven J. McDermott
Each week since mid-January, McDermott has read a story from his short story collection Winter of Different Directions. These can be accessed free as an mp3 you can listen to from your browser or download into your mp3 player. In addition to the podcast, McDermott has posted commentary on the story over in the Storyglossia litblog: “The Story Behind the Story.” This includes history on where the story came from, why he wrote it, how it changed in its various revisions, as well as some of the craft issues he was working on in the story.

Virginia High School to Revise Policy After Controversial Articles Published
June 28, 2007

VIRGINIA — A Fairfax County high school has removed a newspaper adviser and said it will revise school policy on student publications after the student newspaper released two controversial issues in March.

The Lake Braddock High School student newspaper, The Bear Facts, landed itself in controversy when it published its March 2 issue that included articles on homosexuality, transsexuality and review of a documentary about bestiality, and its March 30 issue that carried a story on Post Secret, a Web site that posts anonymous contributors’ secrets displayed on homemade postcards. Although the school did not punish the student newspaper staff for circulating these issues, faculty member Daniel Weintraub has been removed from his adviser position and the school has signaled that it plans to modify student editorial policy for the upcoming school year.

Read the rest as well as other articles at the Student Press Law Center

Storyglossia Issue 20 2007
If you haven’t been reading along as each story has been released, the full Issue 20 is now available featuring stories by: Conor Robin Madigan, Eileen Corder, Elizabeth Ellen, Myfanway Collins, Jocelyn Johnson, David Michael Wolach, Marcela Fuentes, Mark Spencer, Shubha Venugopal, Jacquie Powers, Michael Wigdor, Sabrina Tom, Julee Newberger, and Priscilla Rhoades.

A book worth note in these days and times of “woe is me” and “what can I do about it?” and “I have to do SOMETHING!”

Building Powerful Community Organizations
A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World
by Michael Jacoby Brown (Long Haul Press)
A guidebook for people who want to make a difference in the world and know they can’t do it alone. This new book, with stories, personal exercises and lessons learned, provides detailed information to help you build a new group or strengthen an old one to solve problems in your community, workplace or the world. It includes details about how to:
Take specific steps to build an effective group from the start
Revitalize an existing group
Tap into the special resources and talents of your particular community or group
Recruit participants and keep them active – so that all the work does not fall on your shoulders
Inspire others to take on tasks and responsibility
Structure the group so that it runs the way you want it to
Foster members’ passion for the cause
Run meetings that engage your members and achieve your goals
Raise money to keep the work going
Plan and carry out effective actions to win improvements in the real world
Reflect and learn from your actions to build a powerful group for the long haul
Build a sense of caring and community within your organization

The Way Fire Talks to Wood
by Christine Boyka Kluge
“In front of me in line, a man hisses at a woman. I can’t distinguish all of the words, but the words don’t matter; his voice crackles and stings. He talks to her the way fire talks to wood…”

Read the rest and more on Pif, “one of the oldest, continually published literary zines online.”

QUICK! Quick like a bunny! Get your vote in for the storySouth Million Writer Award for Fiction 2007. The top ten online stories have been selected and readers will choose the winner. To read the top ten stories and cast you vote, as well as read more about the award and the Notable Stories 2006 from which they were selected, visit storySouth. Voting ends June 30, 2007.

“Prick of the Spindle is one of the few journals that publishes drama; we also publish fiction, nonfiction (creative and academic), poetry, and literary reviews. We are looking for well-written work with an eye for language, which may be traditional, experimental, or somewhere in between. In forthcoming issues, we will be publishing interviews with authors on writing practice and other writing-relating topics.”

Excerpts from: “Political Indoctrination and Harassment on Campus: Is there a Problem?”
Participants:
David Horowitz, Founder & President, Horowitz Freedom Center
Cary Nelson, President, American Association of University Professors.
Moderator:
Scott Smallwood, senior editor The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 2007

David Horowitz: Unfortunately, professors of English do rant against the war in Iraq in English classes, inappropriately and unprofessionally. And professors of Women’s Studies do conduct courses on globalization in which the only texts are Marxist tracts on the evils of the free-market, corporate system. “International feminism” is the non-academic, political rubric under which they discuss globalization. These Women’s Studies professors more often than not have PhDs in Comparative Literature or English literature, and have no professional qualifications whatsoever for teaching about the global economy.

Cary Nelson: My academic specialty happens to be modern American poetry. I began teaching contemporary American poetry in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War. I suppose I could have pretended that hundreds of American poets were not writing anti-war poetry, but that would hardly have been responsible; it wouldn’t have been to represent my subject matter fairly.

I found I could add a bit of color to my classes by describing what it was like to hear Allen Ginsberg read his poetry at an anti-war rally at the United Nations and before 10,000 armed bayoneted troops at the Pentagon. He read the poem Pentagon Exorcism Chant in front of the Pentagon with troops all pointing their bayonets at him on top of a flatbed truck, and I stood beside the truck. I didn’t hide the fact.

I now teach a week on September 11th poems where the poets’ political points of view are all over the map. But I have no problem telling my students when they read Imiri Baraka’s poem about September 11th that I think his belief that Israel knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand is nothing more than paranoid nonsense. I guess that’s a political opinion. I offer it.

[Read the rest here.]

The Year in Hate
Hate Group Count Reaches 844 in 2006
“Energized by the rancorous national debate on immigration and increasingly successful at penetrating mainstream political discourse, the number of hate groups in America continued to grow in 2006, rising 5% over the year before to 844 groups.”

Read more on this as well as view a Hate Groups Map of the U.S. which shows exactly what groups and where for each state (nothing like seeing how high your state ranks on this scale *sigh* – Dakotas anyone?): Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center

This foolish boycott will solve nothing: alienating academics will only add to problems
by Jonathan Freedland
“Academics in Britain are set to debate a boycott of their Israeli colleagues, in protest at Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Here, writing for the London Evening Standard, Index supporter Jonathan Freedland tells why he opposes any such move.”

Read the rest: Index for Free Expression

He Shoots, She Scores
When Mike became Christine, she gave Los Angeles sports fans a courtside view of gender politics.
By John Ireland
“For all of its trappings of money, fame, and corruption, professional sports has a lot to do with character. Avid sports fans seem to respect those who face up to overwhelming challenge and overcome adversity. So it should not come as a surprise that readers rose in solidarity when a 23-year veteran sports writer announced in the Los Angeles Times that he would return from a short hiatus…as a woman.”

Read the rest: In These Times.

Arlo Guthrie solo reunion tour starts in July
“Over the last four decades Arlo Guthrie has toured throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia winning a broad and dedicated following. In addition to being an accomplished musician—playing the piano, six and twelve-string guitar, harmonica and a dozen other instruments—Arlo is a natural-born storyteller whose hilarious tales and anecdotes are woven seamlessly into his performances.”

Read more about Guthrie’s career and get the full tour schedule at Honest Tune.

2008 Sandburg-Auden-Stein Residency
Olivet College, Michigan
Intensive Learning Term poet-in-residence program, April 29-May 16, 2008. An award of $3,100 (plus room and board) will be given to the 2008 resident poet. The Humanities Department faculty will evaluate the submissions and choose the winner. Poets who have published at least one book of poetry are eligible.

Front Porch
3.0 Summer 2007

The Pedestal
Issue 40

Prick of the Spindle
Volume 1.1

Siren
Issue 4

Ghoti Magazine is now accepting submissions of essays, poetry, short stories, plays, etc for our special Labor Day issue. “We are looking for writing about work, about getting by in the daily grind. We are looking for writing about the working class. We don’t think the American worker gets the respect they/we deserve, so we’re dedicating a whole special issue to them/us.” For guidelines visit: Ghoti Guidelines.

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political
Volume 32 Number 2, April-June 2007

Counterpoise: For Social Responsibilities, liberty and dissent
Volume 10 Number 3, Fall 2006

Corporate Responsibility Officer
Volume 2 Number 3, May/June 2007

fRoots: The Essential Worldwide Roots Music Guide
Number 289, July 2007

Humor Times
Issue Number 187, July 2007

In These Times
Volume 37 Number 7, July 2007
Why progressive graduates sell out / The pentagon’s contraception politics / Struggling with sports

Sierra: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet
Volume 92 Number 4, July/August 2007

From the you-can’t-even-make-this-stuff-up file of character study:

Normals Need Not Apply
by Francesca Mari

[. . .]”My workers,” Burgett says, “are all nutcakes, criminals, and druggies — reformed.” Then he corrects himself: “Some of them are still in reformation.” Burgett hires almost exclusively from drug treatment and psychiatric treatment centers. “We find that most of the time normals don’t fit in very well,” he says. “I don’t know if you want to look at it as me herding a group of freaks—think of it as a group of people who’ve formed nice symbiotic relation to the world they don’t understand.”

“I have had Jehovah’s witnesses working alongside transsexuals in the middle of their sex change operations. This is fun stuff,” Burgett says. “You can’t get this in the normal world.”[. . .]

Read the rest and more: Terrain Magazine, Spring 2007

M F’ing A
by Megan Roth

Dear Creative Writing Programs,
I have applied to many excellent
Graduate schools this year, and each
School has been remarkably competitive.

Due to the large number of programs to
Which I have applied,
I regret that [. . .]

[Read the rest on Defenestration, Issue 7 Volume 4, June 2007.]

Persimmontree Magazine, Summer 2007
Fiction by Judith Arcana, Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer, Paula Gunn Allen, Carole Rosenthal; Theatre by Martha Boesing; Ten Poems by Grace Paley; Art by Moira Roth and Faith Ringgold

Adirondack Review, Summer 2007
For your reading pleasure, another issue full of great writing, articles, and art, featuring the photography of Mary Robison, the illustrations of Jesse Hawley, writing from both seasoned and brand new writers, book reviews, film reviews, and a fascinating piece of travel writing about an American woman’s experiences with cheese vendors and effusive neighbors in Turkey.

DZANC Books announces the inaugural DZANC Prize – a monetary award to a writer with both a work in progress, and an interest in performing some form of literary community service. The award itself will be a total of $5,000 to be distributed in two payments over the course of a twelve month period. The purpose of this prize is to give monetary aid to a writer of literary promise, in order to provide a budgetary cushion for them, allowing the author to concentrate his/her efforts on the completion of their work in progress. [more information]