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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
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Poetry Month 2016: Louis Simpson
The Unwritten Poem You will never write the poem about Italy. What Socrates said about love is true of poetry—where is it? Not in beautiful faces and distant scenery but the one who writes and loves. In your life here, on this street where the houses from the outside are all alike, and so are the people. Inside, the furniture is dreadful – flock on the walls, and huge color television. To love and write unrequited is the poet’s fate. Here you’ll need all your ardor and ingenuity.Read More
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Adios, Louis Simpson
It was saddening to read this morning of Louis Simpson’s death. His sensibility was Cheever-esque, arising from the vexed heart of suburban America, that spiritually islanded life so similar to the one he’d lived as a youth in Jamaica. Louis Simpson My favorite anecdote about Simpson, the truth of which I can’t swear to, comes from his early years of teaching at Berkley. He’d earned a Ph.D at Columbia and was quietly ensconced in the English Department, where he was glad to lead a semi-reclusive existence.Read More
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Adios, Hayden Carruth
I have been asked more than once recently what book I would want with me if I were stranded on a desert island. (People who ask this forget the key word “desert,” which—if we took it seriously—would dictate something far too slender.) The complete works of William Blake was one of my answers. But today I have to revise that choice. It would have to be the complete works of Hayden Carruth, who died last night at age 87. I discovered Carruth’s poetry through his prose.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. 
