-
Adventures in Reading 2019
2019 was a challenging year—deaths, health scares, creative dysfunction—but as ever, reading sustained me. I finally read Juan Rulfo‘s classic Pedro Páramo—one of those books that makes me wonder why I waited so long. It’s a visceral, phantasmagorical novel with all the psychic force of Greek tragedy. I knew that it is widely considered the first fully-realized instance of magical realism, and I can see how unlikely it would be for us to have One Hundred Years of Solitude without Rulfo’s influence.Read More
-
Adventures in Reading 2018
Old Reading Room at BookBar (Photo: Tricia M.) Let me admit up front that I’ve included half a dozen books here that were read as part of my work with the Professional Creative Writing program at University College. But they all turned out to be worthwhile reading experiences. Even those I couldn’t quite connect with—Juan Gelman’s The Poems of Sidney West, Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw, and Adonis’s powerful Concerto al-Quds, which is also recondite and nakedly anguished by turns—continue to haunt me. This is usually an early indicator of re-readings in the offing.Read More
-
My Year in Books (2017)
This year’s list is longer than usual, in part because I created two literature courses for the Professional Creative Writing program I direct at D.U.’s University College, a process that entailed lots of reading.Read More
-
My Year in Books (2016)
As I did at the end of 2015, I’m laying out my past year’s book reading in the spirit of sharing the often haphazard journey of mind and heart that is my chief solitary pleasure. (There are other pleasures, of course, not solitary at all, but they don’t involve this particular addiction.) Again, the books listed below are ordered according to when I read them. I won’t comment on all of these titles because all of them are well worth reading.Read More
-
Reality and the Kingdom of Images
How strange to discover the figure of Donald Trump in a 2001 novel by César Aira! I’m speaking of Shantytown, in which Aira presents a character called Judge Plaza, an obese woman with dyed-blond hair. Here’s how Aira describes her (pp. 128-129), in Chris Andrews‘ fine translation: Very confident, well-groomed, commanding and decisive. She had earned her reputation. She inspired fear. The tabloid journalists loved her, and so did their huge audience, who felt it was time for a tough and energetic justice, unhampered by wigs and precedents, ready to take to the streets and fight crime on its own turf.Read More
-
César Aira’s Ghosts
Ghosts by César Aira My rating: 4 of 5 stars I find it nearly impossible to describe a César Aira novel. This is because his effects operate in mysterious ways, somehow underneath plot and characterization. But let me nutshell Ghosts without spoiling the arc, which begins in a typically wandering Airaesque way before firming up and acquiring the character of Fate. Raúl Viñas and his family live on the site of a luxury condominium building under construction.Read More
-
Happy New Year!
What better way to start the year than with this series of aphoristic poems by David Giannini? They appear in the first of what I hope will be many issues of Talisman Magazine online, where you’ll also find a clutch of unpublished late poems by the inimitable Samuel Menashe; a group of strange and resonant poems by Lale Müldür, translated from the Turkish by Lisa Bourbeau; and an excerpt from the never published but nevertheless legendary novel Junior Birdman (“The Holy Grail has but one drop left in it: the spirit of childhood”), by William J.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
