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Dick Jones’s New Year Post
A year older again and still seated here looking through the far pane of the bay window at the field, the fenceline, the distant horses, the trees beyond, with a forelock of bare twigs nodding across the quarterlight. From one of the best “new year” posts I’ve seen. It’s over at Dick Jones’ Patteran Pages. I read and recommended Jones’s collection Ancient Lights as the last year was wearing down to the nub. In any case, enjoy his post today.Read More
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The Art that Dare Not Speak Its Name
I hadn’t heard of British poet Dick Jones until Jim Murdoch mentioned him on his blog. Now I’ve ordered Jones’s Ancient Days: Selected Poems, just when my bank account says I shouldn’t be ordering anything. You might experience the same thing if you read this post on Dick Jones’s blog, which Murdoch quoted on his. Here’s a taste: A proposition: Poetry is the art that dare not speak its name. Consider. You’re at a dinner party. You fall into conversation with your neighbour whilst awaiting the last course. You get respective jobs out of the way.Read More
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My Interview with David Constantine at Cerise Press
David Constantine is a wonderfully articulate poet with a scholar’s complexity of vision.We conducted this interview by email, and he was unfailingly generous with his time—as generousas Cerise Press was with space in their publication! You can read the interview here.Read More
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Friday Notebook 01.06.12
I launched into three new classes this week (the first time I’ve taught so many at one time), so my notebook is thin—but rich. It’s full of poems by Louis MacNeice, whose Collected Poems, 1925-1948 I’ve been reading with great pleasure. How I would love to have his facility with cadence and his ferocious clarity about the historical moment in which he found himself! Here are a few I especially admire.Read More
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Anarchical Plutocracy
From the video of an interview with Geoffrey Hill I have struggled over the years, without success, to enjoy Geoffrey Hill’s poetry. Its difficulty is not so defeating as its lack of humor, its deep and finally (for me) corrosive pessimism. Clearly this is a completely subjective response and has nothing to do with the value of Hill’s work, which for others is stratospherically high. But I have to say that this interview with Hill is sending me back to his work, yet again, with a fresh perspective.Read More
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Amateurs and Canonizers
Bill Knott demonstrates how to read a poem. Compare his ever-the-amateur reading (amateur in the old sense of someone doing something purely for the love of it) with this reading of Rae Armantrout by professional critic Marjorie Perloff: Knott’s reading is all about discovery, while Perloff’s is all about canonization. The point is not to say we ought to replace Perloff with Knott, but to suggest we ought to replace Perloff’s intentions with Knott’s intentions whenever we read. That is, we ought to read as amateurs, not pros.Read More
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The Small Flame
Tongue by John Agard, from AlterNative Anthem* Small flameunder the roofof a mouth.You devourYou cleanseYou tell honeyfrom vinegar.You speak truth.You speak slander.You soothewith a kiss.You bruisewith a word. To the possessedyou are the giftof entertainment.To the dispossessedyou are the scaleof judgement. Small flameunder the roofof a mouth. Tyranny knowsyour hiding place. _____________* Distributed in the U.S.Read More
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Neglect
I’ve been pondering a statement made sometime back in a blog post by Bill Knott: “I don’t believe there are any unjustly forgotten 20th Century USAPO—the myth of the unjustly forgotten dead poet.” I love Knott’s contrarianism but wonder about this notion, especially today when I’ve run across a lovely glimpse into one of William Blake’s notebooks, housed at the British Library. The Library’s introduction notes, “William Blake is famous today as an imaginative and original poet, painter, engraver, and mystic.Read More
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Honoring Ted Hughes
There’s a move underway to honor the great Ted Hughes in Poet’s Corner, and I for one can only applaud the idea. He was certainly, as Simon Armitage writes, “a genius with an unparalleled gift, a once-in-a-generation poet whose work was a major contribution to English literature.” Leading the effort, apparently, is the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and his effort strikes me as an act of great friendship and humility. Heaney is a fine poet, but his work doesn’t match Hughes’s in power, range, and sheer adventurousness.Read More
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The Missing
Just a note here about a slim Salt Publishing publication I recently read, Siân Hughes’s The Missing. The Missing is a first book, but it’s author is no novice at life.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. 
