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Mexico Books 2008: Installment 5
Longing Distance, by Sarah Hannah. I had just ordered this collection, Sarah Hannah’s first, when I learned that Ms. Hannah had died, apparently by her own hand. That fact unfortunately colored my experience of her book, making it seem perhaps darker than it really is. There’s nothing wrong with the more somber registers, of course; Sylvia Plath made enduring poetry from them, and there is more than a passing resemblance between Plath and Hannah.Read More
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Mexico Books 2008: Installment 4
Duende, by Tracy K. Smith. Tracy K. Smith’s first collection, The Body’s Question, but I’ll be tracking a copy down to spend some more time enjoying the modulations of her strong, subtle voice. It’s no surprise that this book won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.Read More
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Mexico Books 2008: Installment 3
500,000 Azaleas: The Selected Poems of Efraín Huerta, by Efrain Huerta. Translated by Jim Normington. Edited by Jack Hirschman. I first encountered Efraín Huerta in the mid-seventies, in the Dutton anthology New Poetry of Mexico, where he was represented by two poems in clear but slightly flat translations by Philip Levine—and I’m embarrassed to say that my Spanish at the time was so poor that I failed to appreciate Huerta’s virtues: a fearlessly critical social vision combined with lyric intensity and fierce wit. Jim Normington admirably captures all these qualities and smuggles them into English.Read More
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Mexico Books 2008: Installment 2
Ten Thousand Lives, by Ko Un. Introduction by Robert Hass. In Mexico I read this other book by Korean poet and former Buddhist monk Ko Un. It’s a selection of poems from his vast project, Maninbo, or Ten Thousand Lives. After several years as a leader of the resistance movement against the Korean Republic’s military dictatorships in the 1970s, Ko Un was imprisoned four times, enduring torture and extreme deprivation.Read More
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Mexico Books 2008: Installment 1
I’m finally getting around to mentioning some of the books I read in Mexico back in May. Please indulge me. Just thinking about them brings back the thrash and occasional boom of blue green Caribbean waves on that raw sugar sand…. What?: 108 Zen Poems, by Ko Un. Foreword by Allen Ginsberg. Introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Korean poet and former Buddhist monk Ko Un is one of the great masters of the playful insight.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. 
