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Adios, John Updike
I just read that John Updike passed on today at age 76. I’ll always be grateful to him for his short story “A & P,” in which the cash register makes a little song: “Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)!—the splat being the drawer flying out.” Soon after relating this fact, the narrator, a young kid named Sammy, quits his job as a cashier because his boss, Lengel, had embarrassed a small group of beautiful girls (in particular one whom Sammy calls Queenie), who’d stopped in to pick up a jar of Fancy Herring Snacks.Read More
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Adios, W. D. Snodgrass
I just heard the news that W. D. Snodgrass passed away this morning at age 83. His addiction to innovation within the formal tradition made for a number of rollicking poems that look at first like light verse, although they cast disturbing shadows. And then there’s the barely contained ferocity of his grand cycle of dramatic monologues with Adolf Hitler at its hub, The Fuehrer Bunker.Read More
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Farewell, John Leonard
When Whitman wrote about “great audiences,” he meant readers like John Leonard.Read More
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Adios, Studs
I’m saddened by the passing of Studs Terkel, whose in-depth truth-telling journalism stands up so well to the mental bon-bons that come to us so nicely wrapped in multicolored cellophane by the Corporate media. And it’s interesting to contemplate the passion Terkel brought to understanding America and Americans, especially in comparison with the increasing dispassion and outright disinterest most American poets have brought to that effort over the past 30 years or so.Read More
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Adios, Hayden Carruth
I have been asked more than once recently what book I would want with me if I were stranded on a desert island. (People who ask this forget the key word “desert,” which—if we took it seriously—would dictate something far too slender.) The complete works of William Blake was one of my answers. But today I have to revise that choice. It would have to be the complete works of Hayden Carruth, who died last night at age 87. I discovered Carruth’s poetry through his prose.Read More
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James Crumley, R.I.P.
Novelist and short story writer James Crumley died this past Tuesday. He was a terrific writer, some books stronger than others of course, but all fresh and thorny and energetic. I have a soft spot for his work because my wife and I first read him in Mexico, on our first visit to the late Capitán Lafitte, a low-key seaside resort on the Mayan Riviera run by some of the kindest and most simpatico people we’ve ever known.Read More
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Infinte Jester
The brilliant David Foster Wallace apparently committed suicide on Friday.Read More
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Sad News…
Reginald Shepherd—poet, essayist, anthologist, fellow blogger (visit here and here), and a good friend to The Perpetual Bird—passed away yesterday evening (according to this post by Emily Warn on Harriet) after a long and painful contest with cancer. I never had the good fortune of meeting Reginald, though we corresponded off and on by email. He wrote beautiful poems and passionate, intelligent essays, many of which first saw light on his own blog. We will always have his books, but I will miss the ongoing dialogue he conducted with poets (living and dead).Read More
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Adios, Mahmoud Darwish
“Mahmoud Darwish, the world’s most recognized Palestinian poet, whose prose gave voice to the Palestinian experience of exile, occupation and infighting, died on Saturday in Houston, Texas.” Full story here.Read More
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Adios, George Garrett
“George Garrett, 78, the author of more than 30 books of fiction, poetry, biography and criticism … died May 26 at his home in Charlottesville.”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. 
