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Tidbits from Josef Škvorecký’s “Magnum Opus”
It was Milan Kundera who dubbed The Engineer of Human Souls, by the great Czech/Canadian writer Josef Škvorecký, “a magnum opus.” He was correct. I quoted from it in an earlier post, when I was part-way into the 570-page novel, and now that I’ve finished it, here are a few more gleanings: The most incredible comedies are written by life. • What we feel is obviously more important than what we know. That’s what we live for. We may think we live for wisdom, but in fact we’re living for the pleasure wisdom brings us.Read More
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Two Great Events on One May Weekend
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Thinking of Trump’s Tweet …
… saying that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” [6 Nov 2012]: He Tells Her by Wendy Cope He tells her that the earth is flat— He knows the facts, and that is that. In altercations fierce and long She tries her best to prove him wrong. But he has learned to argue well. He calls her arguments unsound And often asks her not to yell. She cannot win. He stands his ground. The planet goes on being round. And, of course, getting warmer.Read More
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The Impersonal Zest of Wallace Stevens
In Michael Hofmann‘s amusing and erudite review of Paul Mariani‘s latest biography, a predictably flabby rendition of the life of Wallace Stevens, Hofmann manages to dismantle Mariani while building up Stevens. By the end, we want to go back and read Stevens–if not from beginning to end, at least at the beginning and at the end.Read More
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Goodtimes and Hill and Trommer—OH MY
Green Chili for the Soul.Read More
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February First Saturday Reading @ BookBar
Emily Pérez & Jodie Hollander Note new time: Poetry Happy Hour mingling from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. Reading from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Emily Pérez is the author of the chapbook Backyard Migration Route. She holds degrees from Stanford and the University of Houston, where she was poetry editor for Gulf Coast and taught with Writers in the Schools. Her poems have appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Calyx, Borderlands, and DIAGRAM, and her full length book, House of Sugar, House of Stone, is forthcoming from the Center for Literary Publishing. She is a high school English teacher and dean and lives in Denver with her husband and sons.Read More
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Bonnefoy on the Beginning of the Poem
This from an interview with the great Yves Bonnefoy in the Paris Review (“The Art of Poetry No. 69“). The interviewer was Shusha Guppy. Interviewer: How does a poem come to you? Is it something that is given, that comes from outside? Bonnefoy: Nothing has ever been given to me. I do not know a situation in which a poem has been dictated by an “inspiration,” that it has been preceded by the feeling or the thought it’s going to express. What is usual for me is the desire to find myself once again within a specifically poetic idiom.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
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Repeal Gravity!
Neil deGrasse Tyson on “cherry-picking” science to support one’s political druthers.Read More
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Gould | Smith | Krimmel at BookBar September 5th
Mark Your Calendar Now! 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. 
