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A Film about Bill “Red Pine” Porter
Thanks to Ed Baker for pointing me, yet again, toward illumination:Read More
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A Lot of Funny Things
So what in the world’s worth anything?Poetry is priceless (or at least that’s what they pay me).Explaining, clearly, deeply, Love, and Duty,what monkey-hearted men will never learn. —Wang Fan-chih My poems are poems,even if some people call them sermons.Well, poems and sermons do share one thing:when you read them you got to be artful.Keep at it. Get into detail.Don’t just claim they’re easy.If you were to live your life like that,a lot of funny things might happen. —Shih Te Both of the above translated by J. P.Read More
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Sky Lanterns
(Double click image to see full size.) SKY LANTERNS:New Poetry from China, Formosa, and BeyondEdited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain18 illus., 158 pp., US $20University of Hawai’i Press and Manoaavailable in July / August 2012 Purchase link:http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8932-9780824836986.aspx Sky Lanterns brings together innovative work by authors — primarily poets — in mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and beyond who are engaged in truth-seeking, resistance, and renewal. Appearing in new translations, many of the works are published alongside the original Chinese text. A number of the poets are women, whose work is relatively unknown to English-language readers. Contributors include Amang,…Read More
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Play Misty For Me
I have to admit that I’ve often been baffled by Bei Dao‘s poems. It is impossible not to admire his biography, but his poetry—”misty” in Chinese—strikes me as cryptic in English. I’m not saying that his primary translators, Bonnie S. McDougall and David Hinton, haven’t done good work; I’ve always felt that the difficulties lay in Bei Dao’s work itself, and in the cultural/political context which no introductory remarks or footnotes, however assiduous, can provide.Read More
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Mexico Via China
I’ve been trying to gather my scattered thoughts about the many terrific books I read in Mexico, but I’m finding that those two weeks of being a reader as opposed to being a writer have left me unfit for anything but more reading. So, instead of getting my thoughts down for posting, I wandered off into the new issue of The Atlanta Review, much of which is devoted to poetry—classical and contemporary—from China. It’s a rich and rewarding issue of what has become one of my favorite journals.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. 
