House of Mirrors is Joseph Hutchison’s second full-length collection. The evocative cover art is by Denver artist Patty Miller.
Title: House of Mirrors
ISBN: 0-9614643-3-X
Publication Date: 1992
Length: 98 pages
Binding: Trade paper
“House of Mirrors is one of those rare books of poetry that takes you utterly by surprise, that steals into your life with every intent to stay. It’s a lovely, deeply moving collection of poems that strikes a fine balance between the demands of intellect and the lyric urge. Joseph Hutchison is an extraordinary poet, and I hope his book finds many sympathetic readers.”
“No collection as versatile and full-bodied as this should be read at one go, yet so help me that’s how I kept reading it—with poem after poem pulling me forward. In House of Mirrors Hutchison’s tone changes key with subtle skill, but the book’s C-Major is wisdom come by the hard way. The only way. And joy, whch is the deepest wisdom of all.”
“Joseph Hutchison’s poetry is immediate, accessible, and powerful. In an age when the natural landscape is not much noticed by poets, Hutchison sees it clearly and feels it passionately. His values are the best values Americans have ever been able to embrace—a love of family and deep respect for the natural world.”
“These poems by Joseph Hutchison are clear, intelligent, full of feeling (brimming and accurate at once). There’;s not a show-off line in the book. His poems have the natural tact of precision, so they can be read and re-read with accumulating pleasure. Reader, how eften have you asked for less and gotten it? Instead, raise your standards and have them met by this estimable book.”
“For so many years that I can no longer count them with certainty, I have been privately collecting the finely-made and deeply moving poems of Joseph Hutchison, and I am delighted that James Andrews & Co. had taken over the task so that we can all be assured that this body of work is announced, celebrated, and preserved.”
“Hutchison’s voice is usually quiet, his phrasing precise, his analogical and metaphorical connections energetic and fertile. Without compromising the integrity of his voice, he adopts a variety of approaches to form, from the nearly traditional and metrical through unpunctuated free verse to paragraphs. He has a witty and sensitive touch with the juxtaposition of these forms, so that he can sometimes seem to give us, in successive poems, two different ways of thinking about the same question, enigma, or moment.”
— Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor in Poetry (Chicago)