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My Year in Books (2015)
I, too, dislike “best books” lists except when they bring me news of books I want to read but somehow overlooked, which is surprisingly seldom. Over 60-plus years of reading, beginning, as I recall, with Little Golden Books, I’ve developed enough self-awareness to guess correctly about 70 percent of time which books will bring me that mixture of pleasure and revelation that is my particular addiction.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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MacNeice Contemplates the 99 Percent
Louis MacNeice It was something of shock to encounter the 99 percent—not the phrase, but the demographic—deeply considered in the third section of Louis MacNeice’s long poem Autumn Journal (see Katy Evans-Bush’s excellent essay about it here), published in 1938. I had read the poem in my callow youth, but my ignorance of Britain between the wars was like a featureless river stone upon which the poem could simply not get a firm grip. I remembered it mostly for its tone—personal, notational, meditative, acerbic and humorous by turns—and didn’t appreciate exactly what MacNeice was trying to tell me.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. 
