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Adios, Nicanor Parra
This is old news by now … that the great Nicanor Parra passed away on January 23rd. There have been obits and memoirs by journalists and translators, but the best reflection you’re likely to find is by the Chilean native, writer and translator, Soledad Marambio, which you can read here.Read More
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By the Way: Poem with Aside by Parra
Nicanor Parra (Fotografía: Pin Campaña) Jóvenespor Nicanor Parra Escriban lo que quieren.En el estilo que les parezca mejor.Ha pasado demasiada sangre bajo los puentesPara seguir creyendoQue sólo se puede seguir un camino.En poesía se permite todo.A condición expresa por ciertoDe superar la página en blanco.Read More
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Bob Dylan Called This Kind of Thing a “Truth Attack”
We live, of course, in a nation addicted to lies. (Hence, Julian Assange is a “terrorist”, Obama a “Socialist”, etc.) Doubtless Bill Knott will be dumped on for this—and he does seem to confuse City Lights publications with New Directions, unless I misread his postscript—but the core of his post is (it seems to me) undeniable. How refreshing to know that someone has the courage to say so. In the midst of his attack, Knott notes that he continues to read Ferlinghetti “with admiration” and (presumably) Prévert, whose work I quoted here not long ago.Read More
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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
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Re: The Plumbline School
I was a bit surprised to receive an email from Henry Gould of The Plumbline School, inviting me (at the suggestion of Plumbline fellow Joseph Duemer) to join their circle. My response was essentially a reaction to the School’s self-definition, to wit: “Plumbline poetry” is provisionally defined here as poetry which exhibits a stylistic “mean between extremes”: understated, transparent, inclusive, objective. It avoids extremes of both the ponderous and the superficial; it shuns mannerism and facile ornamentation, on behalf of clarity and simplicity of presentation. It strives for mimesis rather than pantomime.Read More
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Pick Up the Phone!
Just finished reading Adrienne Rich’s excellent new collection, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (if you know of a better book title from the past year, I’d like to hear about it). Here’s an insightful review that gets to the heart of what makes this book, and Rich’s work overall, continually powerful and refreshing. Her sympathies reach far beyond feminism or politics in the narrow sense, and in the process produce a kind of poetry that seems to move beyond the subjective/objective, interior/exterior dichotomy by bearing witness to our historical/existential moment.Read More
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No Bull Prizes
On his very entertaining blog, the wonderful poet Bill Knott posted his top 10 poet choices for the Nobel Prize. It’s a fun exercise! Here are my ten, in descending order of age (on the theory that we should honor them before they’re dead): Nicanor ParraAndrea ZanzottoCarolyn KizerW. S.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. 
