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President Obama’s Open Letter to Librarians
Barack speaking out against the suppression of ideas.Read More
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American Society: What Poets See
I’m happy to say that I have three poems in a new anthology from FutureCycle Press called American Society: What Poets See. It’s cleverly put together: Poets appear alphabetically with all their poems together; but a secondary table of contents groups poems by theme, and using it yields the heady experience of hopscotching through the collection. (I can’t wield that word without a nod to the great Julio Cortázar, whose Hopscotch broke this structural ground in 1963.) Here are the groups the editors, David Chorlton and Robert S.Read More
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Truth Challenged
I have several friends of the Republican persuasion who think Obama’s a big fat liar. If I point out Romney’s truth-challenged statements, they make excuses or—if really pressed—retreat into the “all politicians lie” position. (The latter is inarguable, of course, but only because research shows that everyone lies.) So I thought it might be worth putting Romney’s and Obama’s latest PolitiFact ratings (as of July 7, 2012) side by side. With all its bells and whistles, PolitiFact’s Web site mysteriously doesn’t seem to allow such a comparison.Read More
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Gay Marriage and the First Amendment
Linda’s book is available from bothAmazon and Barnes & Noble My friend Linda Roe, a hospice chaplain in Denver, a longtime practitioner of yoga, and a recently published memoirist, has thought her way through the gay marriage issue in a fresh way. Her argument that denying members of the LGBT community the right to marry violates the Constitution. I find her view not just insightful but compelling, and I’m aware of no one else who has made this particular argument.Read More
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The Mindset
I’m not sure that CA Conrad‘s work deserves such extensive treatment (I’ve read maybe a dozen of his poems and can’t remember a thing about them except a sort of free-floating fatuity), but Curtis Faville’s consideration of the Philadelphia poet’s The Book of Frank is an intelligent exploration of Conrad’s negative example. By that I mean that it’s less about Conrad than about the poetic values that Conrad’s work fails to engage. This failure isn’t personal; it’s cultural.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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Cognitive Dissonance
Obama Says U.S. Troops in Australia Will Preserve Peace, Security in Asia Full story here.Read More
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Getting Acquainted with A Few Facts
I’m a long-time subscriber to Harper’s, and in each new issue it’s the Harper’s Index I always read first. The June (yes, June) 2011 issue lists these wonderful statistics—as ever, without comment: Average amount NATO spends each week enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya: $1,930,000 Estimated value of arms sent by NATO countries to Muammar Quaddafi since 1969: $10,000,000,000 Minimum amount Qaddafi held in U.S. banks at the time his assets were frozen in February: $29,700,000,000 Seems Qaddafi’s retirement fund was doing quite a bit better than mine.Read More
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A Bitter Fatigue, Volume Three
I planned to post reactions to Obama’s first State of the Union address, but Bob Arnold has said everything I meant to say, better than I could have managed to say it. Give it a look! On second thought, Bob doesn’t mention the reaction of Yosemite Sam Alito to Obama’s criticism of the high court’s majority ruling that opens our already cash-corrupted political system to even more massive corporate influence.Read More
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A Bitter Fatigue, Volume Two
In a comment on a previous post of mine, James (of ursprache fame) referred me to Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry. I haven’t picked up the book yet, but the referral did send me back to my library for a fresh look at Leopardi’s Pensieri, piquantly translated by W. S. Di Piero. Right off the bat, I found Leopardi speaking to our current distress vis-à-vis the banking industry from his superior vantage point in 1837: I say that the world is a league of scoundrels against men of generosity, of base men against men of good will.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. 
