Literary Group’s Co-Founder Quits

Michael Logue, the co-founder of and prime mover behind Poets Reading Inc., has resigned from the literary organization, an action he believes will cause the group to fold.

Logue, who has run the nonprofit operation without pay since 1988 with the aid of a few volunteers, said he would not continue to shoulder the burden and that efforts to find someone to take his place have been fruitless.

“It would take a . . . miracle” to keep Poets Reading Inc. going, said Logue, who said he has worked from 40 to 100 hours a week organizing up to four monthly poetry readings around Orange County and staged other related activities. “There’s just nobody willing to take it on.”

Logue said his last Poets Reading Inc. event will be a June 29 poetry competition at Fullerton Museum Center, where the group typically drew about 100 patrons to periodic readings. Logue said he will see that the Quarterly, a poetry journal, will continue publication at least through the end of this year. And he hopes to sell some 300 remaining copies of an anthology of Persian Gulf War poems that Poets Reading Inc. recently published.

Board member Brett Serle said the board, which must vote to disband the group, will discuss the operation’s future.