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Mexico Books 2009: The Violent Foam
Unless one is promiscuous by nature, one needs a decent interval between leaving one lover and finding another.* One needs a similar interval after reading writers as strong as Bolaño and Parra. But I’d brought a stack of books to Mexico with me, and some secret drive to read them all before coming home made me move directly on to Daisy Zamora’s The Violent Foam: New and Selected Poems, published by Curbstone Press in 2002.Read More
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Mexico Books 2009: Let the Truth Be Told
I promised in an earlier post to write about the second book I read in Mexico this year, Nicanor Parra’s After-Dinner Declarations. But every time I try to write about the book I get stuck: Parra’s book is brilliant but, for me at least, unsummarizable. The collection contains five long poems in the form of speeches, which Parra actually delivered on various occasions.Read More
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Mexico Books 2009: Distant Star
I started reading Roberto Bolaño’s novel Distant Star at Denver International Airport, where we waited three hours for the first leg of our flight to Cancún. Thunderstorms over Dallas had grounded flights there, where we were supposed to connect, so I started out with an overhanging mood of distress, uncertainty, and not too far below the surface, anger—at the weather, the airline, and the idiocy of my choosing a connecting flight to save a few bucks.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. 
