-
The Guardian’s Great Poets Series
Britain’s The Guardian offers up a series it calls “Great Poets of the 20th Century,” a link-rich glimpse into the English public intellectual class’s image of itself. American readers may be surprised that the editors claim America’s own Sylvia Plath for England (anticipating, I suppose, the outcry that would have greeted their inclusion of Ted Hughes without her) and mysteriously elevate Sassoon over Owen. Still, it seems well worth reading.Read More
-
On the Letters of Ted Hughes V
Finishing The Letters of Ted Hughes—which I managed to do while recovering from a nasty bout with the flu—left me with a strange mixture of exaltation and biting sadness: something, I mean, beyond the sadness that books like this (biographies, letters, etc.) inevitably inspire because they end in the grave.Read More
-
The Astonishing Sinéad Morrissey
I don’t remember how I first head of the young Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, but I’m grateful to Serendipity for sending her work my way. Her first two collections, There Was a Fire in Vancouver and Between Here and There are lively and adventurous, but her third, The State of the Prisons, places her among the half-dozen finest poets of her generation. That book’s eponymous poem, subtitled “A History of John Howard, Prison Reformer, 1726-1790,” is a masterpiece, but it’s too long to quote here.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. 
