-
A Squirt of the Salve of Humor
I’ve ranted here before about poetry written by grad students for other grad students—you know, that fragmentary, theory-ridden, wink-wink nudge-nudge poetry invoking the mouldering corpses of Wittgenstein and Derrida as if their ideas had not long ago been zombified. Well, it turns out that this kind of poetry has its analog in disciplines other than the language arts.Read More
-
Copper-Egg People
Just when you think the folks at Harriet have finally disappeared down the rabbit-hole of Con Writing and its several intersecting tunnels (look just under the sod: they don’t dig deep), in walks Linh Dinh to shake things up.Read More
-
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
-
The Decade in Poetry
An interesting article entitled “2000-2009: The Decade in Poetry” is online now at The Poetry Foundation site. Nine poets, nine points of view–all intriguing. Most notable for Perpetual Bird readers may be the fact that I find myself in total agreement with one of the nine, Ron Silliman, whose take on the impact of new publishing technologies (online and print) deserves to be fleshed out by someone (not me–maybe Ron himself?).Read More
-
A Blogger’s Notebook 10
Herewith the reason I finally had to learn how to pronounce “Wittgenstein” (see my previous post).Read More
-
Against Butchery
As someone who once told his high school college counselor that he wanted to major in English because, in part, “I’ve always been good at ‘a sage,’” (by which I meant “usage”), I’m alerting those with a similar pronunciational affliction to the existence of a new and expanding resource: a site called inogolo.com. It was here that I recently discovered exactly how to pronounce Ludwig Wittgenstein (LOOD-vihg VIT-guhn-shtine)—though now I need to figure out how to work that into some everyday conversation. Not bloody likely.Read More
-
Dissenting from “The Debate”
I jumped into Seth Abramson’s attempt to formulate new terms for what he sees as distinct types of poetry in the current American litscape—alternatives to “School of Quietude” and “Post-Avant,” the numbing dualism favored by so-called language poet Ron Silliman.Read More
-
Bacterio-Textual Flagellation
In Chapter 104 of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville puts these words into Ishmael’s mouth—but surely the sentiment is his own: In the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with the outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs.Read More
-
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
-
Scriptordillyicious…
Sometimes blogging encourages a shoot-from-the-hip mentality that doesn’t serve anyone well. But sometimes the rapid response reflex opens a door — which is what happened for me when I posted a reply to Ron Silliman’s post (do read it: it’s quite entertaining) praising a new anthology edited by Jeff Hilson, entitled The Reality Street Book of Sonnets. Here is my comment: A friend of mine, an artist, many years ago asserted that anything an artist calls art IS art. (Our wrangling over this, of course, came down to deciding what an “artist” is.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. 
