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On the Fear of Influence
CULTIVATED GROUND When young, one is fearful of being influenced by other writers. With maturity that fear dissipates and one detects the sound of foreign voices on one’s home ground and is often delighted to be helped with a few thrusts of the spade. It is more important that the earth be properly cultivated than that every potato be planted with a jerk of the arm uniquely one’s own.Read More
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Adventures in Reading 2022
PART ONE: DISTRACTION AND ENCHANTMENT 2022 was unkind to my habit of reading lots of books. Partly my paid work was to blame: growing pains (which I am too old for) of the professional kind. Then there was the several weeks I wasted on Thomas Mann‘s Doctor Faustus, which I had to abandon. What drudgery! What a distraction! I’d read and admired a number of Mann’s short stories, but Doctor Faustus struck me as all posturing, a ponderous performance with no point in sight, almost every moment of it arriving via second- or third-hand reports about Mann’s fictional, Schoenbergian composer, Adrian Leverkühn.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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Laura Cesarco Eglin Zooms In (Free Reading)
Join Us for a Free Zoom Poetry Reading Featuring Laura Cesarco Eglin Monday, March 15, 2021 6:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. Poet, translator, and publisher Laura Cesarco Eglin has authored numerous collections of poetry, as well as translations from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician. Her work has appeared in many journals and she is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books. She teaches at Simpson College. Learn more about Laura Cesarco Eglin and her work: https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/tag/laura-cesarco-eglin/ Laura will read in both English and Spanish, then take your questions on craft, poetry, and translation.Read More
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Cavafy. Connery. Vangelis. Oh my….
I recommend full screen mode for this.Read More
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Excerpts from a Manifesto (1924)
I put this post together last year, while writing my annual Adventures in Reading post. Then I forgot to post it! So, for your reading pleasure, a few excerpts from “Surrealism Manifesto,” by Yvan Goll (October 1, 1924), translated by Nan Watkins and published in full in The Inner Trees: Selected Poems of Yvan Goll, edited by Thomas Rain Crowe. Much wisdom here! Reality is the basis of all great art. Without it there is no life, no substance. Reality is the ground under our feet and sky over our head.Read More
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Since I Don’t Speak German…
… I thought I’d try translating Rainer Maria Rilke‘s great poem, “Archaïscher Torso Apollos.” Hey—even our pizza delivery guy has tried his hand at this one! For background, I think the single most interesting, if sometimes oddball, commentaries on translating this poem is this one by Art Beck. He looks are a number of translators’ efforts, including those by J. B. Leishman, M. D. Herter Norton, C. F. MacIntyre, Stephen Mitchell, David Young, Edward Snow, and William Gass—the last for whom Beck reserves his harshest critique.Read More
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“The Greatest Liar in the World” (Flash Fiction by Etgar Keret)
In the wake of President Bonespur’s stint as a Mussolini-esque weatherman, Keret (as translated by Jessica Cohen) offers an especially resonant reading experience. Here’s one exemplary excerpt: [H]is mouth is a bona fide cosmic phenomenon, a black hole that sucks in reality and spits it out the other end as something completely different.Read More
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News that Stays News from the 11th Century
The poems below are from Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol, translated from the Hebrew by Raymond P. Scheindlin. A beautiful and challenging poet, Ibn Gabirol seems strikingly modern in his methods, at least as brought over into English by Scheindlin. For more information, see Mitchell Abidor‘s fine review of Vulture in a Cage here. Behold the rose: Her body’s like her garment. When you look at her, she blushes like a bride before her husband, or like a girl who runs out screaming, her hands upon her head in horror. * Bring me to the vineyard, friend.Read More
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Immensity’s Resonance
I’ve never, as I recall, posted while vacationing in México. It is typically an escape into extended quiet time with my lovely wife amid sea vistas, the soft rattle of palm leaves, a margarita or two, conversations with good friends in which I slaughter the Spanish language … and, of course, a stack of books to read. José Juan Tablada This time I’m also diverting myself by translating a small book of haiku-influenced poems by José Juan Tablada, called Un Día … poemas sintéticos (One Day … Synthetic Poems).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. 
