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On Penny Harter’s Recycling Starlight
In a recent review of Helen Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, the politico-literarily inept Lorin Stein reveals himself to be a refreshingly direct, no-nonsense reader of poetry. He values Vendler’s Dickinson for its “sensible, elegant interpretations” of a poet who “has become our founding experimentalist.” By that he means that we are encouraged “to find [Dickinson] daunting: cagey, coy, subversive, furious, elliptical. These are qualities,” Stein adds, “we tend to prize, and even fetishize, in poetry today.” He’s right, of course, and he’s right that this view distorts Dickinson.Read More
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Seth Abramson on The School of Quietude
I’ve become addicted to Seth Abramson’s blog The Suburban Ecstasies, in part because he always seems to be thinking out loud, not delivering sermons or condescending rants, and thinking out loud requires openness—a quality I value much more than the closed-circuit pronouncements of the Harold Bloom type.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. 
