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We Are the 4%
The “world that is the case” is the red sliver in this chart,according to NASA. Get used to it! I persist in considering myself an agnostic, based on (if nothing else) the latest discoveries of astrophysics regarding the Dark: namely that “dark energy” and “dark matter,” about which we know precisely nothing except how much of each there is, together comprise about 96% of the universe. Given this situation, it seems absurd to claim that one knows whether or not there is a deity or multiple deities. I suspect there are none.Read More
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Linda Hogan’s Happy Challenge
Linda Hogan is one of my favorite poets. She’s best known to the wider world as a novelist and essayist, but at heart she’s a poet, and her new poetry collection, Rounding the Human Corners, is a profound gift, especially for someone like me, who considers himself a humanist—although it’s a term that fits less like a glove than a too-small suit. I especially feel the constrictions of my “philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason” [Webster’s] when I read a poet like Linda Hogan.Read More
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Mr. Dinh Goes to Santa Cruz
I strongly recommend Linh Dinh‘s series of posts on his sojourn in Santa Cruz (he spent five days or so in town before giving a reading on Friday, November 14).Read More
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Buddhism, Darwinism, Avant-Garde
In an earlier post I gave myself permission to post fragments. So here goes…. ===== I’ve been reading the new book by my favorite philosopher, Buddhist thinker David R. Loy. Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution pulls together shorter pieces written for magazines, and the venue seems to have encouraged great concentration and great simplicity in Loy, who is typically (anyway) capable of moving from the just-shy-of-obscure to flashes of brilliance with ease.Read More
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Dangerous Considerations
The October 2007 issue of Poetry carries an observant, insightful bit of prose by the great Polish poet Adam Zagajewski entitled a “Dangerous Considerations: A Notebook.” He touches on Christmas in Krakow, Gottfried Benn, political disputes occasioned by Zbigniew Herbert’s death, Robert Musil and Thomas Mann (whose Magic Mountain Musil described as a “shark’s stomach”), Ted Hughes’s translations of Yehuda Amichai, a festschrift honoring the poetry of Stanislaw Baranczak, the essays of Gershom Scholem, Saint-John Perse (nom de plume of Aléxis Léger, who in the 1930s served as director of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), E. M.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. 
