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Adventures in Reading 2018
Old Reading Room at BookBar (Photo: Tricia M.) Let me admit up front that I’ve included half a dozen books here that were read as part of my work with the Professional Creative Writing program at University College. But they all turned out to be worthwhile reading experiences. Even those I couldn’t quite connect with—Juan Gelman’s The Poems of Sidney West, Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw, and Adonis’s powerful Concerto al-Quds, which is also recondite and nakedly anguished by turns—continue to haunt me. This is usually an early indicator of re-readings in the offing.Read More
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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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Whose Side Are You On?
I side with those, like the Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, who prefer Collecteds to Selecteds. (See my earlier post for Morrissey’s poem on the subject.) But what if there’s no Collected? Such beasts are typically posthumous affairs and take years to assemble, which seems to be the case for William Stafford. But one of the pleasures to be had from a Collected edition—instances of early poems written during a poet’s formative years—are at least available now in Stafford’s case.Read More
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The Astonishing Sinéad Morrissey
I don’t remember how I first head of the young Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, but I’m grateful to Serendipity for sending her work my way. Her first two collections, There Was a Fire in Vancouver and Between Here and There are lively and adventurous, but her third, The State of the Prisons, places her among the half-dozen finest poets of her generation. That book’s eponymous poem, subtitled “A History of John Howard, Prison Reformer, 1726-1790,” is a masterpiece, but it’s too long to quote here.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. 
