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My Year in Books (2016)
As I did at the end of 2015, I’m laying out my past year’s book reading in the spirit of sharing the often haphazard journey of mind and heart that is my chief solitary pleasure. (There are other pleasures, of course, not solitary at all, but they don’t involve this particular addiction.) Again, the books listed below are ordered according to when I read them. I won’t comment on all of these titles because all of them are well worth reading.Read More
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A Stray Thought
I was reading Kent Johnson’s post on John Latta’s Isola di Rifiuti blog this morning when a stray thought zapped flylike through a small tear in the screen of my concentration. The post continues a debate between Johnson and Tony Towle over a famous poem ascribed to Frank O’Hara, but which Johnson speculates may in fact have been an imitation of O’Hara written in homage to the deceased poet by his friend Kenneth Koch.Read More
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For Against the Day
Herewith one of the most insightful commentaries on one of the GBs (no, you Rachel Ray fans, not “garbage bowls”) of the past half century*, Thomas Pynchon‘s Against the Day. By whom? By someone from whom I did not expect it.Read More
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Inherent Vice
I just finished Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice. It may well be his weakest book, but still a wonderful summer experience for old farts like me, and any other Jim Crumley fans out there. A genre mystery set in L.A., 1970, it’s soft- not hard-boiled due to the diminished mental capacity of the dopers whose lives Pynchon offers up with (dare I say it?) hallucinatory clarity. Among these folks, of course, such clarity amounts to a blur tinged with quasi-mystical insights gleaned from Gilligan’s Island reruns and surfer band tunes.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. 
