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Adios, Christopher Hitchens
Photograph: Felix Clay, from The Guardian, 2008 No one could exactly be taken by surprise at the new that Christopher Hitchens has lost his life to cancer. (I was going to lapse into the “battle” metaphor, but he would despise that—as he did every—cliché.) I first discovered Hitchens when he was writing for The Nation; at that time, his was not an entirely contrarian voice: he spoke in the tradition of his great moral and stylistic hero, George Orwell, a man who was equally uncomfortable with the clichés of both the Left and the Right.Read More
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We Are the 4%
The “world that is the case” is the red sliver in this chart,according to NASA. Get used to it! I persist in considering myself an agnostic, based on (if nothing else) the latest discoveries of astrophysics regarding the Dark: namely that “dark energy” and “dark matter,” about which we know precisely nothing except how much of each there is, together comprise about 96% of the universe. Given this situation, it seems absurd to claim that one knows whether or not there is a deity or multiple deities. I suspect there are none.Read More
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Passing Amusements
The Duchess and Duke of Windsor Sucking Up to the Führer I missed Christopher Hitchens’ review of The King’s Speech back in January, but it deserves to be widely read in the wake of the movie’s success at the Oscars last night.Read More
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Linda Hogan’s Happy Challenge
Linda Hogan is one of my favorite poets. She’s best known to the wider world as a novelist and essayist, but at heart she’s a poet, and her new poetry collection, Rounding the Human Corners, is a profound gift, especially for someone like me, who considers himself a humanist—although it’s a term that fits less like a glove than a too-small suit. I especially feel the constrictions of my “philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason” [Webster’s] when I read a poet like Linda Hogan.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. 
