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Adventures in Reading 2019
2019 was a challenging year—deaths, health scares, creative dysfunction—but as ever, reading sustained me. I finally read Juan Rulfo‘s classic Pedro Páramo—one of those books that makes me wonder why I waited so long. It’s a visceral, phantasmagorical novel with all the psychic force of Greek tragedy. I knew that it is widely considered the first fully-realized instance of magical realism, and I can see how unlikely it would be for us to have One Hundred Years of Solitude without Rulfo’s influence. Then there was Ted Hughes‘s Selected Translations (see Ann Skea’s review here), offering a taste of texts ancient…Read More
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Sea Poems of Juan Ramón Jiménez
The great Juan Ramón Jiménez often drew inspiration from the sea, and a great many of his sea poems are brought together in The Poet and the Sea, translated by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney. What follows is one of my favorites: IDEAL ARRIVAL February 11 To Joaquín Sorolla Suddenly, the afternoon opens out, like a golden fan, a great royal illusion. What a sense of wellbeing fills us, what happiness! You’d think Turner were seeing it with us… Seagulls whose arrival we didn’t notice, that no doubt were here already, fly overhead, in the flags waving from the…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. 
