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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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Delicious Advice for Aspiring Poets
From the inimitable Wisława Szymborska, Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet who produced a column for a newspaper called Literary Life. She answered letters from everyday people who wanted to write poetry—a sort of “Dear Wisława” relationship that she handled with intelligence, humor, and care. Here are a few selections from her column, translated by Clare Cavanagh and courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.Read More
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Adios, Wisława Szymborska
“Poland’s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88. […] The Nobel award committee’s citation called her the ‘Mozart of poetry,’ a woman who mixed the elegance of language with ‘the fury of Beethoven’ and tackled serious subjects with humor.” More here. * * * Hiroshige Utagawa, “Evening Showerat Atake and the Great Bridge” PEOPLE ON THE BRIDGEby Wisława Szymborska(tr.Read More
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Szymborska’s “The Joy of Writing”
Wisława SzymborskaPhoto: Adam Golec©Agenca Gazeta THE JOY OF WRITINGby Wisława Szymborska Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?For a drink of written water from a springwhose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.Silence—this word also rustles across the pageand parts the boughsthat have sprouted from the word “woods.” Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,asre letters up to no good,clutches of clauses so subordinatethey’ll never let her get away.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. 
