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Words for Japan
Melissa Allen has a wonderful new edition of her Across the Haikuverse series of blog entries. It’s focus is haiku and other significant communications from earthquake-shaken, tsunami-battered Japan.Read More
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Seeing Through the TV Screen to Japan Circa 1810*
(after Issa) hazy moon in steamfrom the cracked nuclear plant—ghost-light passing through ____________________________________* 1810 is a guess: the date of Issa’s poem is unknown.Read More
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The Road to The Narrow Road
By now it’s no secret to this blog’s readers that I’ve been absorbed in Matsuo Bashō’s travel sketches as translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. I am working my way toward his masterpiece in this genre of haibun, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” The road to The Narrow Road is beautiful, because Bashō tried out various approaches before figuring out how to integrate prose and poetry in a mutually illuminating way, and it’s a pleasure to watch him working it all out. More than a pleasure, though.Read More
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Unity and Disunity
Speaking of Bashō’s famous frog poem, Nobuyuki Yuasa writes: “On the surface the poem describes an action of the frog and its after-effects — a perfect example of objectivity. But if you meditate long enough upon the poem, you will discover that the action thus described is not merely an external one, that it also exists internally, that the pond is, indeed, a mirror held up to reflect the author’s mind.Read More
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Brief Hiatus…
I’m laying low for a few days, visiting family in Eugene, where today I picked up two journey books: John Brandi’s Diary from a Journey to the Middle of the World and Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North; I lost the latter, fittingly enough, in a move many years ago, and with Brandi’s book in hand it just seemed the right time to replace that long lost copy.Read More
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300-Year-Old News….
I just cashed in a book store gift card from Christmas (thanks, Joe and Esther!), picking up a copy of Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated by Jane Reichhold.Read More
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Knott’s Basho Gives You Get-Up-And-Go
Bill Knott’s various visits to Bashō’s pond are about as entertaining as poetry gets.Read More
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Presence and Absence in the Work of Shuntaro Tanikawa
What follows is an anti-review. It is an anti-review of Shuntaro Tanikawa’s 62 Sonnets and Definitions: Poems and prosepoems. I call it an “anti-review” because it violates the rules of reviewing in several ways. First, the book is not new: it appeared over a decade and a half ago, in 1992.Read More
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The Naif
Part of any poet’s ongoing labor is thinking up and filing away possible titles. Some must do this for poems (I remember reading that John Ashbery begins every poem with a title—which may be why, since writing is a process of discovery, his poems often have no clear relationship with his titles), but for me titles almost always come after the poem is written. But I do collect potential titles for future collections. Today I filed away a new one: Native Tongue.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. 
