Poster featuring iron cast of Walt Whitman's hand courtesy of Academy of American Poets . “Stars ink your fingers with a lexicon of flame blazing rare knowledge.” --from The River of Winged Dreams (Aberjhani) Every year the Academy of American Poets produces a fascinating poster in celebration of National Poetry Month  in April. The Academy, along with such partners as The Poetry Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and American Libraries, very generously makes the poster available for free as a digital download and as a hard copy poster via the U.S. postal service. The posters are always unique in their visual style and feature quotes, from works by famous authors, which are often both compelling and inspiring. Last year’s poster featured a collage of envelopes, stationery, and writing utensil with the following words from the Prague-born poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s   classic book Letters to a Young Poet : “Write about your sorrows, you

Logo for PEN International World Association of Writers The PEN American Center turned all of 90 years old in 2012 and recently decided to give itself a very useful digital facelift. With such cases like that of the Qatari poet Mohammed Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami , Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega still rocking international headlines, the PEN American Center’s mission in conjunction with PEN international ––to defend the right to freedom of expression and promote the values of literature and literacy––has never been more valuable than right now. As much as I’m enjoying its swagging new style , the upgrade came with a price to which I, and other authors who maintained blogs on the site, now have to adapt. My primary reason for joining PEN American Center last year was to participate in and contribute to the legacy of literary camaraderie first established by C A. Dawson Scott and John Galsworthy––and then later sustained by such lumino

                    Journalist, publisher, and blogger Eskinder Nega. (World News photo) “ I am Eskinder Nega. Like my hero Nelson Mandela, my soul is unconquered, my spirit unbroken, my head unbowed, and my heart unafraid.”—Eskinder Nega from I Am Eskinder Nega Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid. One may literally find the lessons of that simple observation all over the map at this halfway point in the year 2012–– and only a few months before Americans take their collective political fate into their own hands during one of the most intense presidential elections on historical record.  From such a perspective, it matters less whether you look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to skillfully dissect Arizona’s (and by extension similar states’) Illegal Immigration Law, and then largely uphold President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as vi