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A Conversation in Progress II
This continues my conversation with Reginald Shepherd regarding his recent post on Harriet. Of course, there they are mixed in with all sorts of commentary from other readers, so I’m culling the latest installments of our conversation for presentation here. ++++ Dear Joseph, Thanks for your thoughtful and eloquent comment. I think that we do in fact disagree, but I will try to clarify my position.Read More
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An Interesting Factoid…and a Daunting Projection….
I ran across these in a recent white paper on the subject of virtualization, a technology that “provides logical representations of physical resources while preserving the usage interfaces of those resources.” The amount of data created, captured, and replicated worldwide in 2006 was 161 million terabytes—enough for 3 million copies of every book ever written. By 2010 this digital universe is expected to expand six-fold.Read More
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A Conversation in Progress
Reginald Shepherd has put a thought-provoking post on his Harriet blog, which you should read here before going on. I thought I should aggregate the exchanges that followed between Reginald and me, if only because it’s fund (for some people) to experience writers thinking “out loud.” +++ Here’s my initial reply: Reginald writes: “Art emerges from and is conditioned by its social context, but it isn’t determined by it.Read More
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Soliciting Good Thoughts…
NOTE: I’ve inserted the links below; they are not in the original email. +++++ Date: February 26, 2008 1:10:51 PM CSTSubject: James Tate Events Canceled I have some sad news. James Tate, who was to read here on March 6th, has been hospitalized with a stroke, so his appearance must be canceled. I hope everyone will send good thoughts his way.Read More
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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
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Reginald Shepherd Interview
Kudos to Reginald Shepherd for his candidness in this noteworthy online interview.Read More
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For Valentine’s Day
Love in a Warm Room in Winter The trouble with you isYou think all I want to doIs get you into bedAnd make love with you. And that’s not true! I was just trying to make friends.All I wanted to doWas get into bedWith you and make Love with you. Who was that little bird we saw towering upside downThis afternoon on that pine cone, on the edge of a cliff,In the snow? Wasn’t he charming? Yes, he was, now,Now, now,Just take it easy.Read More
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A Valuable “Post-” Post
Over at his blog on Harriet, Reginald Shepherd offers a characteristically insightful post about “post-” poets (post-modern, post-avant, etc.). Here’s an excerpt: Post-avant writers tend to eschew the standard and standardized autobiographical or pseudo-autobiographical anecdote which predominates in what’s called (usually pejoratively) “mainstream” poetry. Indeed, they frequently problematize and question the notions of self and of personal experience. But they don’t just discard the self as an ideological illusion. As well, they tend to avoid or at least seriously complicate narrative of any variety. They incorporate fracture and disjunction without enthroning it as a ruling principle.Read More
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News Flash: Langpo Relents (Or Does He?)
Ron Silliman’s latest post, a praise-song to Geoffrey Young’s The Riot Act, begins—as do so many of Silliman’s posts—with a sneer. “In one sense, Geoffrey Young is the poet Billy Collins & Ted Kooser both would like to be, writing self-contained works that are narrative marvels and accessible to just about any reader of English.” This fatuous statement is followed by this lucid introduction to one of Young’s poems. “Dig:”, he instructs us from under his cocked beret, the epitome of avant-schmavant cool. Now, I don’t want to sneer at Geoffrey Young.Read More
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On The Letters of Ted Hughes
I’ve been reading The Letters of Ted Hughes, which I’m finding impossible to put down. Like all letters written by people of genius, Hughes’s letters are a magical mix of erudition, crank notions, unguarded humor, soap opera, and authentic emotion. Hughes—who for my money stands as the greatest British poet of the last century—has more valuable things to say about the practice of poetry than anyone I’ve read. Herewith an example: “Up to the invention of Caxton’s press, and for most people long after, all reading was done aloud. Most people were incapable of reading silently.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. 
