Lisa Piazza

Audre Lorde, in a 1989 commencement address, said, "Remember this, despair is a tool of your enemies. That rumor, 'You can’t fight City Hall,' is circulated by City Hall. Facing the realities of our lives gives us the motivation for action, it gives us the power to change. You are not powerless."

The California State University system spent $16.9 million last year giving ChatGPT to all students, faculty, and staff. We are asking the CSU chancellor not to renew the contract with OpenAI when it expires.

Anyone can sign the petition — link below!

Jim Harrison

Always a good one

When billy b is writing songs about your town you have already won

So exciting!!

Cream background with jacket cover of LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO THE WAR. Lower left corner is the Sarabande logo in white.

🎉 Happy Publication Day to LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO WAR by Lesyk Panasiuk translated by Ilya Kaminsky & Katie Farris 🥳

Buy your copy today! www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

Ivory background. The white Sarabande logo is in the upper right. In the center is an image of the book INTIFADAS. Text at the top in black reads "Chosen as one of the Top 10 Poetry Books for 2026 - Publishers Weekly"

✨ Don't miss out on Sarabande's lead poetry title this spring, INTIFADAS by Edward Salem, on sale Apr. 21 was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Top 10 Poetry Books coming out Spring 2026! ✨

🔗 Buy your copy directly here: www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

Ivory background with black quote marks in the upper left and lower right hand corner. The white Sarabande logo is in the upper right. To the lower left is an image of the book HOW TO DISAPPEAR AND WHY. The text quoted in the center reads: "...funny, provocative, relatable, vulnerable, cynical, and sobering by turns... - Starred Kirkus Review"

HOW TO DISAPPEAR AND WHY by Kyle Minor, on sale Feb 24, just received a starred Kirkus (@kirkus_reviews) review! Critics are calling this collection "funny, provocative, relatable, vulnerable , cynical, and sobering by turns..."

🔗 Buy your copy directly here: www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

Best writing tips ever.

So important. What they say is not the story. That is never the story. What happened is the story. Write what happened.

I've never seen a population more united. If people can hold onto that unity, if people can accept that different people will have different ways of confronting fascism, if we can remind NGOs and orgs that they can join but not control the resistance, then, well, people here will write history.

Robert Hayden masterpiece:

January/February 2026 Literary Mama

Our Jan/Feb issue is live! Enjoy beautiful poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary reflections, profiles, and reviews from mama writers!

2026 Fiction Submissions Strange Horizons Open Now

Fiction submissions are open now!

The window will be open until January 21st 2026 at 3 p.m. UTC.

For additional information about submitting including our Moksha link ⬇️
strangehorizons.com/submit/ficti...

WHEN DID THEY STOP THOUGH

""The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door...""

One of the greatest poems ever written: www.themarginalian.org/2015/04/21/l...

THE OTHER EXCITEMENT If I go back into memory it's not because I like it, but because that's where the hard things are. Nothing that gets excited. Almost ripe and the beauty of things in the middle distance. Going down the mountain.

Linda Gregg

personal letter no. 3 nothing will keep us young you know not young men or women who spin their youth on cool playing sounds. we are what we are what we never think we are. no more wild geo graphies of the l flesh. echoes. that . we move in tune to slower smells. it is a hard thing to admit that sometimes after midnight i am tired of it all.

Sonia Sanchez

Esther Lin Comparison My mother stood over my bedside and raked at my nightgown. She said comparisons must be made. The youthful body to the one about to die. I rose and complied. My hair was thick and dark, it wove itself over me. She had no such raiment. Not anymore. What is comparison but the union of two separate beings? All my talents. They were given to me.

“Comparisons must be made.” A poem by Esther Lin.

Strata – beautiful short read on the consolations and invitations of deep time www.themarginalian.org/2026/01/11/l...

I encourage you to write today I do.

You know what? I encourage you to write today.
gabinoiglesias.substack.com/p/i-encourag...

Books don't tell readers who they personally are or who they are supposed to be. They do show readers a variety of characters. Implicit in that is this: "Here are some ways of being." Kids books aren't altering your kid to be someone new. They are simply showing them parts of humanity.

A 35 year old letter to the editor, written by a very ballsy 15 year old, about the Rodney King verdict.

Remembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.

The Night, the Plan, the Stars Hard to tell if whoever hung those lanterns from bare branches meant to compensate, or console; maybe just decoration... The charge was to go sweetly anyways where sweetness had often made no difference. A lost art: predicting the future by listening to the sounds leaves make, each to the other, touching, not touching. It was required that they be unfallen. Hope made them brave, or look brave.

Carl Phillips

True! Writing poetry with my students yesterday — first day back — was the best way to ease in to the new semester. It’s fun.

I Went Out to Hear Leila Chatti The sound of quiet. The sky indigo, steeping deeper from the top, like tea. In the absence of anything else, my own breathing became obscene. I heard the beating of bats' wings before the air troubled above my head, turned to look and saw them gone. On the surface of the black lake, a swan and the moon stayed perfectly still. I knew this was a perfect moment. Which would only hurt me to remember and never live again. My God. How lucky to have lived a life I would die for. from the book WILDNESS BEFORE SOMETHING SUBLIME / Copper Canyon Press

Leila Chatti, on @poetrydaily.bsky.social

A Cottony Fate Long ago, someone told me: avoid or. It troubles the mind as a held-out piece of meat disturbs a dog. Now I too am sixty. There was no other life.

Jane Hirshfield 💙

Happy #smallpoemsunday!
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

“Be kind, be involved, believe in your art,” he said. “At a time when people tell you art is not important, that is always the prelude to fascism. When they tell you it doesn’t matter, when they tell you a fucking app can do art you say, if it’s that important, why the fuck do they want it so bad? The answer is because they think they can debase everything that makes us a little better, a little more human. And that, in my book, and in my life, includes monsters.”

Love this from Guillermo del Toro