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Pursuit of the Inexplicable (A Happy New Year Review)
Andrei Codrescu‘s The Poetry Lesson is a wonder worth beginning your new year with. The scene is an unnamed university in New Orleans, though we can be forgiven for thinking it must be Louisiana State University, where Codrescu taught for 25 years and from which he retired in 2009. More specifically, the scene is the first session of the last Introduction to Writing Poetry class the narrator, who is retiring, will ever teach. Melancholy and mercurial hope are built in.Read More
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Notley…? I’m Afraid Not.
I’ve tried off and on for years to enjoy Alice Notley‘s poetry. (It comes highly recommended by poets I admire—Rae Armantrout, Andrei Codrescu, Anne Waldman and others. I’ve tried to find it interesting on a basic level and I’ve looked for reasons to think it profound. In fact, I snapped up a copy of her Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005 in the hope that an extensive but judiciously chosen overview of her work would make her (in some quarters) iconic status understandable.Alas.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. 
