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On Carol Bass’s Ripple Effect
Order directly from the publisher or from Amazon. I am blown away. Flummoxed. Exalted! There is a new brilliantaceous star atop my publishing tree this Christmas, thanks to editor, artist, and poet Carol Bass.Read More
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Celebrate Armistice Day with “War of Words”
Click here to order or reserve tickets. Just $5 each! On Veterans Day, November 11, One Night Stand Theater will present a theatrical piece I created called “War of Words,” first performed at the Arvada Center earlier this year. November 11 is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, which marked the end of World War I. With that in mind, “War of Words” features poetry of “The Great War,” primarily poetry by Americans such as Carl Sandburg, Edith Wharton, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and many others.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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Legions of the Sun: Poems of the Great War
Legions of the Sun: Poems of the Great War is Joseph Hutchison’s 3rd edited anthology of poems. Title: Legions of the Sun: Poems of the Great War ISBN: 9781610195041 Publication Date: March 14, 2018 Length: 98 pages Binding: Trade paper From the Introduction: This anthology, consisting mainly of American poets writing during and after the Great War, grew out of a text called “War of Words,” which I created for performance by actors from The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. It was composed to be part of the Center’s 18-month-long commemoration of America’s engagement in that transformational conflict.Read More
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The Drama of War-Time Poetry
The performance of “War of Words” went off without a hitch last night in the Black Box Theater at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Having written the script, I was surprised by how moving it was—how the century-old poems sprang to life with such power and subtlety from the mouths of the five actors. Among the many enlivening elements were smoothly delivered accents—Hardy’s Dorset English, Apollinaire’s bon vivant playfulness, the taut Germanic sounds of Trakl, and the sly Chicagoan cadences of Carl Sandburg.Read More
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War of Words (and Others) with a Discount Offer
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Discoveries in Writing the Script for “War of Words”
Ticket sales have begun for “War of Words,” based on a script I wrote/assembled by four Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities actors, under the guiding hand of director Lynne Collins. The preceding slash mark means that much of the script consists of poems by North Americans, written in response to WWI, with an original narration linking and, I hope, illuminating the work of these poets. I started researching poetry of the period over a year ago, with the aim of presenting poetic reactions to the U.S. entry into that war from this side of the Atlantic.Read More
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An Alert from the Poetry Early Warning System
This is far in advance, I know, but I’m hoping you’ll all put this event on your calendars then jump on those devices to snag tickets! The event is a performance by four Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities actors of a script I’ve written/assembled, which aims to flesh out the conflicting and conflicted reactions to the U.S. entry into WWI by twelve North American poets.Read More
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James Wright: A Life in Poetry
I just finished Jonathan Blunk‘s powerfully moving biography, James Wright: A Life in Poetry. It is everything a great biography should be: a delicate balance between passing time and the abiding genius that seems to irrupt from a region outside of time. Given his family background, Wright was a person who should never have fallen in love with language, but thanks to some sensitive and insightful early teachers, he did, and so we have the opportunity when we read him to fall in love with it in poem after poem.Read More
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Democracy, or The Arc of Evolution Bends Toward Consciousness
An uplifting message, badly needed in our current situation….Read More