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Another Retrospective
Just one of the piquant fragments from this farewell-to-2012 essay by Charles Simic: “Are there more idiots in the world today percentagewise than in some earlier ages?” asks Teofil Pancic, a columnist for Belgrade’s weekly Vreme. His answer is that it only seems so, because today they are more visible, more audible, and, of course, connected by the Internet.Read More
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School of Humor (not the School of Quietude)
So in all innocence I travel from one of my favorite blogs, 3QuarksDaily, to a linked article called “The Dead Chipmunk: An Interrogation into the Mechanisms of Jokes,” by Chris Bachelder. It opens with a pretty funny story about Bachelder and his (her?)* daughter and a dead chipmunk. But then that dread, dusty, scholastic word “interrogation” flaps down buzzard-like onto the creaky branch of the author’s main argument, and all goes awry. “Jokes are rarely if ever in the first person,” Bachelder writes, presumably with a straight face.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. 
