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Adios, Paul Auster
I came Paul Auster not through The New York Trilogy but through a skinny chapbook from Station Hill press called Facing the Music, published in 1980. It had goodbye woven all through it. Not “goodbye cruel world” but goodbye to poetry, which he’d been writing and publishing for a decade. It was his last standalone collection, and when I think of him now, I think of those 13 pages of valedictory verse. Poetry may address emptiness but it thrives in being. Auster needed prose to keep one foot firmly planted in each of those conditions.Read More
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Adios, Louise Glück
THE MOUNTAIN by Louise Glück My students look at me expectantly. I explain to them that the life of art is a life of endless labor. Their expressions hardly change; they need to know a little more about endless labor So I tell them the story of Sisyphus, how he was doomed to push a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing would come of this effort but that he would repeat it indefinitely.Read More
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What Comrade Trump and Comrade Tucker Want for America
https://lithub.com/on-the-ukrainian-poets-who-lived-and-died-under-soviet-suppression/Read More
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Adios, Robert Bly
It’s startling to think of Robert Bly moving on, leaving us here without his energy, his restlessness, his exemplary dedication to opening a path toward a different way of imagining the purpose of poetry. Dana Gioia famously asked, “Can poetry matter?” Bly showed that it could matter … that poetry provided a way into the reaches of spiritual life that had been hidden away from us by America’s utilitarian values.Read More
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A Tribute to Robert Mezey
Thanks to Jodie Hollander and Aaron for this extraordinary assemblage of twenty-five friends and colleagues from all over the world who generously gave their time to honor the remarkable poet Robert Mezey. (See below for a few samples of his work.) The various interviews and when they appear in the podcast are listed below: Rhina Espaillat (2:17); Charles Wright (5:16); Dana Gioia (11:03); Jackie Coulette (16:13); Michael Collier (20:28); Olivia Ellis (25:21); Eugene Pugach (30:35); Charles Martin (33:32); Paul St.Read More
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“Running For Your Life”: A Community Poem For Ahmaud Arbery
Listen Here: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/862339935/running-for-your-life-a-community-poem-for-ahmaud-arberyRead More
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A Fresh Look at Sylvia Plath’s Last Year
Do not miss this moving, illustrated tribute to the haunted genius of Fitzroy Road by Summer Pierre.Read More
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Adios, Donald Hall
We shall have to wait for the better-written obituaries, but this one will have to do for now, despite its peculiarities. This non sequitur, for example: “An opponent of the Vietnam war, he was ruthlessly self-critical.” Or: “He met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the leaker of the Vietnam war documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his college friend.” Well, we are in the realm of journalistic deadlines, and even major new outlets have experienced cuts on the editorial side.Read More
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Adios, Nicanor Parra
This is old news by now … that the great Nicanor Parra passed away on January 23rd. There have been obits and memoirs by journalists and translators, but the best reflection you’re likely to find is by the Chilean native, writer and translator, Soledad Marambio, which you can read here.Read More
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Adios, Richard Wilbur
I’m not sure what kind of knuckle-dragger one would have to be not to enjoy Richard Wilbur’s polished verse, whether or not one thinks its virtues amount to “a little too regular a beauty” [Randall Jarrell, quoted in today’s Guardian obituary]. I too prefer the rough magic of Lowell, Berryman, and Plath—but, as Robert Creeley famously wrote, “Love is dead in us / if we forget / the virtues of an amulet / and quick surprise.” These are the chief virtues of Wilbur’s poetry.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. 
