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Adios, Donald Hall
We shall have to wait for the better-written obituaries, but this one will have to do for now, despite its peculiarities. This non sequitur, for example: “An opponent of the Vietnam war, he was ruthlessly self-critical.” Or: “He met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the leaker of the Vietnam war documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his college friend.” Well, we are in the realm of journalistic deadlines, and even major new outlets have experienced cuts on the editorial side.Read More
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My Year in Books (2015)
I, too, dislike “best books” lists except when they bring me news of books I want to read but somehow overlooked, which is surprisingly seldom. Over 60-plus years of reading, beginning, as I recall, with Little Golden Books, I’ve developed enough self-awareness to guess correctly about 70 percent of time which books will bring me that mixture of pleasure and revelation that is my particular addiction.Read More
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Graveside in Damascus
In the recently released A Levant Journal, translated by Roderick Beaton from the Greek of Nobel Prize winning poet George Seferis, the great poet visits the grave of Jane Digby (a.k.a. “Ianthe”) in Damascus. As so often in his journals, Seferis produces what amounts to a prose poem—a brief description full of suggestive disturbances. He is incapable, it seems, of shallow writing. It was getting dark, a wind was blowing. Between the grave and the surrounding wall was a great walnut tree heavy with ripening fruit.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. 
