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Adventures in Reading 2022
PART ONE: DISTRACTION AND ENCHANTMENT 2022 was unkind to my habit of reading lots of books. Partly my paid work was to blame: growing pains (which I am too old for) of the professional kind. Then there was the several weeks I wasted on Thomas Mann‘s Doctor Faustus, which I had to abandon. What drudgery! What a distraction! I’d read and admired a number of Mann’s short stories, but Doctor Faustus struck me as all posturing, a ponderous performance with no point in sight, almost every moment of it arriving via second- or third-hand reports about Mann’s fictional, Schoenbergian composer, Adrian Leverkühn. We are supposed…Read More
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Poetry Month 2016: Bei Dao
Mission The priest gets lost in prayer an air shaft leads to another era: escapees climb over the wall panting words evoke the author’s heart trouble breathe deep, deeper grab the locust tree roots that debate the north wind summer has arrived the treetop is an informer murmurs are a reddish sleep stung by a swarm of bees no, a storm readers one by one clamber onto the shore [From The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems, translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong] ~ From the publisher’s Web site: The Rose of Time: New & Selected Poems presents a glowing selection…Read More
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Mahmoud Darwish’s Mural
Mural by Mahmoud DarwishMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I won’t “review” the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s Mural, which contains the gorgeous 45-page title poem and a second, shorter poem, “The Dice Player,” both brought over into vigorous English by Rema Hammami and John Berger. “Mural” was written after Darwish underwent a life-threatening surgical procedure, and the poem bears the scars of that crisis; “The Dice Player,” his last poem, the poet read publicly in Ramallah just a month before his death on August 9, 2008. Both are powerful, but “Mural” is the more capacious, a sprawling meditation on…
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Friday Notebook 09.30.11
STORM SEASON Veils of rain trailed by low clouds snagged on the shadowed peaks, as if the body poured its anger into the panicky atmosphere: dense drops striking granite; cold white flashes under the skin. *** somewhere a red ant hill with red ants eating a baby somewhere two blood diamond miners slash each other open with knives fashioned out of folded dollar bills somewhere in the tinted windows of a limo heaps of rubble flow and a pair of eyes scan the current for a clue somewhere a soup kettle stirred with a corpse’s middle finger somewhere in the…Read More
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A National Anthem
This extraordinary poem by Mahmoud Darwish appears in the new (October 2008) issue of The Progressive. Many thanks to Darwish’s American translator, Fady Joudah (see here and here), for bringing Darwish to us in such supple English. To Describe Almond Blossoms To describe almond blossoms, the glossary of flowersdoesn’t come to my aid, and neither does the dictionary…speech will snatch me to the scam of eloquence.And eloquence wounds meaning then eulogizes the wound,like a man who dictates to a woman her feelings.How can almond blossoms radiate in my languagewhen I’m an echo?And they are diaphanous like laughing water that sproutsfrom…Read More
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More on Darwish
Many more links about the life, work, and death of Mahmoud Darwish here, courtesy of the indefatigable Ron Silliman.
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Adios, Mahmoud Darwish
“Mahmoud Darwish, the world’s most recognized Palestinian poet, whose prose gave voice to the Palestinian experience of exile, occupation and infighting, died on Saturday in Houston, Texas.” Full story here. I also recommend a visit to Darwish’s extraordinary Web site, which opens with the sound of Darwish reading one of his poems—a stirring experience in itself….
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The Poetry of Outsidership
I just discovered a site called Goodreads, and yesterday I posted this brief review there. I’ve expanded it somewhat and added a few links for this incarnation. Someone once pointed out that judges of the Yale Younger Poets competition are dependent on what comes across their desks. There are fat years and lean years. W. S. Merwin’s first year as judge was a lean one, evidently, since he could find no manuscript worth publishing. But last year was a fat one, if Fady Joudah‘s The Earth in the Attic (selected by Louise Glück) is any indication. Joudah’s poetry is powerful…Read More
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Essential Breath
Fiona Sampson’s review of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s The Butterfly’s Burden, is — according to Laila Lalami — the first review of this copious collection since the book’s release in the U.S. over a year ago by Copper Canyon Press. (The fact that such an important book would have to be republished in England before a major news outlet would acknowledge its existence makes one wonder if the Israel Lobby doesn’t influence more than U.S. foreign policy.) The review says everything I might say about Darwish, whose work I was lucky to encounter three or four years ago, brought over…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. 
