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Careless
Joseph Duermer has a thoughtful Plumbline School post that draws on a quotation from Gaston Bachelard. It hit me with the force of revelation, though there’s nothing new in its core idea—that “the true poem awakens the unconquerable desire to reread.” What this means, of course, is that poetry in this country doesn’t suffer from a lack of readers but a lack of re-readers. And why? Maybe it has to do with our long cultural history of preferring disposability over durability.Read More
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Pith and Gist
Mairi, one of the contributors over at The Plumbline School, posed this question in response to one of my comments: ” I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share your personal poetics? Or anyone else who possesses such a thing, for that matter? Nothing long and elaborate. Just pith and gist….” Well, my “pith and gist” proved longer than the 4,096 character limit Blogger imposes on comments. So I posted a partial version and linked back to this post for the complete response…. Mairi, you set me back on my heels a bit with this request.Read More
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Starting a Voice That Is Great List
Over at The Plumbline School there’s been an affectionate discussion of Hayden Carruth‘s durable anthology The Voice that Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century. Among the back and forth in the comment stream one of this blog’s “followers,” the mysterious Mairi, made a fascinating suggestion: “Why don’t you start a list? By ‘you’ I mean all of you. Give people something else to sit around in coffee houses and come to fisticuffs over.Read More
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But the List, and My List!
On his blog about 10 days back, Javier Huerta floated this idea: List “20 poetry books (if there are twenty) that made you fall in love with poetry, the books that made you think: I want to do this, I need to do this.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
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. 
