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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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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
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Folktale Blues
I don’t know what it is about that portion of Europe that in the 16th and 17th centuries was part of the Ottoman Empire, but the poets who spring from that soil often write in the manner of folktales. (Think of Vasko Popa and his famous pebble.) It’s a mode that largely vanished with the Renaissance in the rest of Europe, which embraced the Enlightenment and its Realism with fierce devotion and consigned the Fantastic to children’s literature.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. 
