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Adventures in Reading 2021
It was another pandemic year, in some ways more challenging than the first. There was a sense of fraying in the fabric of social life, work life, personal focus (my poetry journal full of fragments that I’m not postmodern enough to throw down on pages and pretend that they cohere as poems), the persistent floating anxiety. Among the various costumes that relief arrived in were books, of course.Read More
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On David Giannini’s Mayhap: Selected Brief Poems
No American poet since William Stafford is as quotable as David Giannini. A tendency toward aphoristic piquancy layers and complicates all of his work. It’s not that he rejects simplicity; it’s simply that the world and the mind that perceives it are not simple, and Giannini is committed to complexity as part of his continual reach toward wholeness. Giannini’s new collection (his fourth from Dos Madres Press), Mayhap: Selected Brief Poems, is a fine example his commitment.Read More
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On Carol Bass’s Ripple Effect
Order directly from the publisher or from Amazon. I am blown away. Flummoxed. Exalted! There is a new brilliantaceous star atop my publishing tree this Christmas, thanks to editor, artist, and poet Carol Bass.Read More
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Putin’s “Evil” and a Map-in-Flux
Just stumbled on this wonderful aphorism by the Italian writer Amedeo Ansaldi at James Geary’s aphorism blog: We always choose our enemies among those whom we would have liked to become. They are our lost image.Read More
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Boosting America’s IQ
A couple of days ago, heading out on the 400-mile trip from Indian Hills to Durango to meet our 4-week-old grandson for the first time, we stopped on our way out of town at the post office. Amid a stack of junk mail and bills was a padded envelope with a copy of the recently released anthology, A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. The editor, Becca J. R.Read More
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50 Best Poetry Books Since 1950
Back in 2009, Tony Barnstone initiated a game on Eratosphere that involved readers posting their choices for “the Best 100 Poetry Books of the 20th Century.” It was a great exercise because it was more than a list: each reader could choose only one book and had to write a brief paragraph explaining why that book belonged on the list. Well, we’re almost a decade and a half into the 21st century, and the 20th “best books” lists have been done to death. So I’d like to adapt Barnstone’s game to our current situation.Read More
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Observations…
This piquant observation comes from poet Dick Jones: As the people of the United States of America set about the process of determining who shall preside over its mighty mish-mash of socio/economic inequity, mediaeval religiosity and cultural turmoil, it does to reflect on the nature of power and choice. He goes on to offer several apposite quotes. Among my favorites: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts.Read More
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The Painting of You and Addressing 30: A Timeline
Opening any new book begins an adventure. It may turn out to be an adventure of the Disneyland type—mechanical rides, overpriced nutrition-free snacks, sweaty adolescents in cartoon character costumes (you know: the whole Post-Modern funhouse)—or one of those voyages “buoy’d on the dense marine“: Leaves of Grass, Neruda’s Fin de Mundo, Ammons’s Sphere. Of course, most books fall in between these extremes. But I confess to a preference for those that offer the sensation of “waves breaking just over the hill,” a salt fragrance of depths and distances.Read More
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Open and Closed, Part 6
A couple of readers have wondered what happened by my posting of so-called School of Quietude poems. Well, here’s another batch, all drawn from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems, by William Stafford. This little selection was hard to arrive at because Stafford wrote so many poems, even the weakest of which carry fragments of brilliance.Read More
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Those Who Can’t Do…
I highly recommend a visit to Ron Silliman’s blog post today, in which you can savor his disordered thought process in all its glory. He starts off with a school-marmish sneer toward Curtis Faville for using parodize instead of the correct parody in the comments stream, while going on to note that there have been plenty of parodies of Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, “tho I don’t recall linking to any.” You see, in Silliman’s world, “tho” is acceptable but “parodize” is not, undoubtedly because “tho” was sanctified by his Objectivist hero George Oppen.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. 
