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Adventures in Reading 2022
PART ONE: DISTRACTION AND ENCHANTMENT 2022 was unkind to my habit of reading lots of books. Partly my paid work was to blame: growing pains (which I am too old for) of the professional kind. Then there was the several weeks I wasted on Thomas Mann‘s Doctor Faustus, which I had to abandon. What drudgery! What a distraction! I’d read and admired a number of Mann’s short stories, but Doctor Faustus struck me as all posturing, a ponderous performance with no point in sight, almost every moment of it arriving via second- or third-hand reports about Mann’s fictional, Schoenbergian composer, Adrian Leverkühn.Read More
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Adios, Donald Hall
We shall have to wait for the better-written obituaries, but this one will have to do for now, despite its peculiarities. This non sequitur, for example: “An opponent of the Vietnam war, he was ruthlessly self-critical.” Or: “He met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the leaker of the Vietnam war documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his college friend.” Well, we are in the realm of journalistic deadlines, and even major new outlets have experienced cuts on the editorial side.Read More
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Three Recent Marked Men Readings
Marked Men launch reading at The Tattered Cover‘sbeautiful and welcoming Colfax Avenue store,September 20, 2013A longish (about an hour) performance with quite a few questionsfrom the audience, which is always a pleasure. Book Bar Marked Men reading,October 4, 2013A slightly shorted version of the Tattered Cover readingwith a small but appreciative audience, who entered into a livelydiscussion afterwards. Turkey Creek Cafe Marked Men reading,November 13, 2013I was joined by Tim Fuller (right), who did a fine job in hisfirst public reading.Read More
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Friday Notebook 03.23.12
[From A Treatise on Poetry, by Czesław Miłosz (tr. Robert Hass):] If it’s all a dream, let’s dream it to the bottom. * … [A] poet without communityRustles in the wind like dry grasses in December.Read More
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Friday Notebook 03.02.12
Had I posted a Friday Notebook entry last week it would have comprised the first half of the quotations below. They are from Lawrence Durrell’s Constance, or Solitary Practices (1982), which I finished reading yesterday—in between various writing-for-hire and teaching-related activities. Constance is the third in Durrell’s final novel series, his “quincunx” of five novels. Herewith, a few extracts: Lawrence Durrell He wore his puritan life like a dead crow round his neck. * If foreigners did not exist the English would not know who to patronize.Read More
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Friday Notebook 11.04.11
There is little in my notebook this week beyond a few stray quotes drawn from my reading and a raw reaction to one of Conrad DiDiodato’s most intriguing blog posts, which needs fleshing out. Let me post my notes on Conrad first: I reread Frank Samperi’s trilogy a few months ago, and it produced a kind of seething in my mind which I recognize in Conrad. His post suffers from a conflation of Language poetry (in the person of Silliman) and the Occupy Movement.Read More
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Friday Notebook 10.28.11
I’m turning over the first of my notebook entries today to a rant—a brief one—in response to this article by Stephen Marche. The author uses Roland Emmerich‘s film “Anonymous” (which I haven’t seen) to attack what is known as the Oxfordian view of Shakespeare: in a nutshell, the notion that the plays were written not by the man from Stratford but by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. I have written about this here before, so my views on the matter are clear.Read More
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Friday Notebook 10.21.11
Merwin, Wright (Charles), Rengetsu, Issa, and … Hutchison? Thanks to Don Wentworth for letting my Earth-Boat into his harbor…. * * * I’ve been on a vacation from verse, it seems—stymied in my own work, disappointed in the four or five collections I’ve been eking away at for weeks (no need to name names; it may be just my mood, but is recent American poetry not withering from being over-fertilized by cleverness?). Anyway, I recently finished Lawrence Durrell’s Monsieur.Read More
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Friday Notebook 10.07.11
Some imp makes melike to scare myselfwith what-ifs * * * In those days I was in the full flush of my scientific knowledge—unaware that the dogmatic theology of science was itself a kind of folklore…. * I saw quite unmistakably that man had set astray the natural periodicity of sexuality and so forfeited his partnership with the animal kingdom.Read More
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Earnings Report
In the comment stream related to a piquant entry on his blog, William Michaelian made this observation: “By and large, it seems we earn a readership that mirrors our own strengths and shortcomings.” Turn that one over a few times! There’s wisdom in it. I added a reaction to the comment stream there, and thought it might be worth expanding a bit here. What I thought is that the reverse may be true as well—that the writers we value mirror our own strengths and shortcomings.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. 
