tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-363592192012-02-01T17:10:35.058-07:00The Perpetual BirdRuminations, intimations, protestations, proclamationsJoseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.comBlogger886125perpetualbirdhttp://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-36407277066855229822012-02-01T17:09:00.000-07:002012-02-01T17:10:35.068-07:002012-02-01T17:10:35.068-07:00Adios, 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.
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Hiroshige Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/02/adios-wislawa-szymborska.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-25935976003104580182012-02-01T10:00:00.000-07:002012-02-01T10:00:03.825-07:002012-02-01T10:00:03.825-07:00New Salamander PoemsAnnie Wyndham has posted a fresh batch of poems over at Salamander Cove, selected from her reading both on and off line. Fine work by Bob Arnold, Bill Knott, Joel E. Jacobson, John Levy and more. Enjoy!Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-salamander-poems.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-92231212208453661232012-01-30T10:00:00.000-07:002012-01-30T10:00:06.653-07:002012-01-30T10:00:06.653-07:00What If Poets Thought This Way?Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-if-poets-thought-this-way.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-42743609063499137202012-01-27T15:58:00.001-07:002012-01-27T15:58:38.151-07:002012-01-27T15:58:38.151-07:00Friday Notebook 01.27.12Pastiche: After Bill Knott’s
Selected Poems, 1960-2012*
I like how Bill Knott blows his mouth harp
blithely, as Stevens played his oboe. I call
them masters as I hum-blow my kazoo,
spin these verses out of mere asides
signed sotto mano by deaf-mute twins
parted at birth, but years later delivered
into each other’s care. Small wonder
my poems veer from rancor to abject
tenderness, marking over Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com2http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/friday-notebook-012712.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-87858877189982277672012-01-24T10:45:00.000-07:002012-01-24T10:45:27.336-07:002012-01-24T10:45:27.336-07:00A Fine Start to the New Year
On New Year's Eve I picked up mail at our little local P.O. and what should I find but some starch for my flagging ego: a hot-off-the-press copy of a new anthology, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined, edited by Madelyn Garner and Andrea L. Watson. It's the first publication of a new press called simply 3: A Taos Press. The book was even then listed on Amazon, though—as often Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com1http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/fine-start-to-new-year.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-90750631536650194872012-01-24T10:00:00.000-07:002012-01-24T10:00:06.481-07:002012-01-24T10:00:06.481-07:00Gholson Chats Up WentworthSteer on over to Christien Gholson's excellent interview with the inimitable Don Wentworth, whose Past All Traps was listed among my 2011 favorites. You'll be glad you did!Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com1http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/gholson-chats-up-wentworth.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-52547367457464310182012-01-23T10:00:00.001-07:002012-01-27T19:12:25.904-07:002012-01-27T19:12:25.904-07:00An Addendum
L'autoritratto di Montale. 1952.
My last Friday Notebook post should have included the following—a translation of Montale's famous sunflower poem, occasioned by a request from Conrad DiDiodato for versions of it to be published on his blog. Conrad himself and Annie Wyndham (see here and here) have weighed in as well. I highly recommend that you visit Conrad's post and contribute your own Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/addendum.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-61582463546875981112012-01-20T10:19:00.000-07:002012-01-20T10:31:38.213-07:002012-01-20T10:31:38.213-07:00Friday Notebook 01.20.12Driving a dark, wind-buffeted valley road last night, an idea came to me. One of those proliferation moments, like time-lapse of a sunflower unfolding. By the time I got to a place where I could scribble the following notes, though, the moment was gone. The traces of it are here, in these words, which now have the look of sea wrack on a beach. Nevertheless:
The idea that no creature possesses Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com6http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/friday-notebook-012012.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-46616242050996134242012-01-18T14:55:00.001-07:002012-01-18T14:55:41.494-07:002012-01-18T14:55:41.494-07:00Rather than Go Dark...Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com2http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/rather-than-go-dark.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-15643385162718941642012-01-16T09:41:00.001-07:002012-01-16T09:41:50.502-07:002012-01-16T09:41:50.502-07:00"Let Us Turn Our Thoughts Today to Martin Luther King..."Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/let-us-turn-our-thoughts-today-to.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-86082344125503717652012-01-11T10:00:00.000-07:002012-01-11T12:24:20.557-07:002012-01-11T12:24:20.557-07:00The Joy of Books
Or, as a poem of mine in The Undersides of Leaves puts it:
THE BOOKS
On the dark shelves
the books are breathing.
Moonlight slips between
their covers, running
bright hands over
the yellowed pages.
When we read them, settled
deep in private chairs,
words splash
down through our bodies
toward the earth’s
black center.
And when sleep
buries us, the deepest
stones whisper (with
the moon’s Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com2http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/or-as-poem-in-undersides-of-leaves-puts.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-71354900437138913202012-01-10T10:00:00.000-07:002012-01-10T10:00:01.681-07:002012-01-10T10:00:01.681-07:00From that Wonderful Resource, the Poetry Translation Centre
Flute Player
by Farzaneh Khojandi
Where is the real bazaar?
I want to buy an eyeful of kindness.
I want to dress my soul in hyperbole.
There's a merchant who brings me
a whole spectrum of leaping colour
from the city of desires.
But here at the bazaar at Khojand,
faces are sour, talk is hot
and I long for the cool sweets of Tabriz.
Where is the real bazaar?
The flute-player tells me:
come Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com1http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/from-that-wonderful-resource-poetry.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-85475174275907046302012-01-09T09:00:00.000-07:002012-01-09T15:05:51.129-07:002012-01-09T15:05:51.129-07:00Václav Havel on Recent American Poetry: A TravestyI was reading along in Václav Havel's historic essay "The Power of the Powerless" when I came to a passage that made my poetic antenna hum. I realized that Havel's analysis of what he called "post-totalitarian" Czechoslovakia, published in October 1978, includes a pretty fair description of American poetry at this moment. I don't by any stretch of the imagination mean to trivialize Havel's essay,Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com5http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/vaclav-havel-on-recent-american-poetry.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-78521206019353137962012-01-06T09:37:00.000-07:002012-01-06T09:37:33.494-07:002012-01-06T09:37:33.494-07:00Friday Notebook 01.06.12
I launched into three new classes this week (the first time I’ve taught so many at one time), so my notebook is thin—but rich. It’s full of poems by Louis MacNeice, whose Collected Poems, 1925-1948 I’ve been reading with great pleasure. How I would love to have his facility with cadence and his ferocious clarity about the historical moment in which he found himself! Here are a few I especially Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com2http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/friday-notebook-010612.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-41180523850004751112012-01-03T14:57:00.000-07:002012-01-03T14:58:13.007-07:002012-01-03T14:58:13.007-07:00A Don't-Miss Art Show
Three examples of my friend
John Ransom
making me look good!
Our excellent friends John Ransom and Barbara Mastej comprise two-thirds of the artists showing at Venice, California's historic Cadillac Hotel. See John's galleries here and Barb's here. Don't miss the opening if you're in the area!
I should note that John did the cover artwork for my collection Bed of Coals, artwork and book Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com1http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/dont-miss-art-show.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-6573631977974255302012-01-02T14:00:00.000-07:002012-01-02T14:00:02.990-07:002012-01-02T14:00:02.990-07:00History By the OunceLike all Amazon Prime members (meaning simply that I pay a flat annual fee to get "free" shipping on my orders), I get occasional emails from Amazon alerting me to items I might be interested in buying, based on my past buying patterns. Here are two of the items in one such email that arrived a day or so before New Year's Eve:
When you think about it, $1.69 per oz. is a bit steep for a book. Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com5http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/history-by-ounce.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-16739069689311330322012-01-01T12:05:00.000-07:002012-01-12T07:54:56.946-07:002012-01-12T07:54:56.946-07:00MacNeice Contemplates the 99 Percent
Louis MacNeice
It was something of shock to encounter the 99 percent—not the phrase, but the demographic—deeply considered in the third section of Louis MacNeice's long poem Autumn Journal (see Katy Evans-Bush's excellent essay about it here), published in 1938. I had read the poem in my callow youth, but my ignorance of Britain between the wars was like a featureless river stone upon which Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com4http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2012/01/macneice-contemplates-99-percent.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-9959859339771830352011-12-31T09:28:00.000-07:002011-12-31T09:28:00.981-07:002011-12-31T09:28:00.981-07:00The More Things Change...Every New Year, this mood of melancholy doggedness...
the
And here, in a similar register, what strikes me as the best Occupy Writers poem so far, by D. A. Powell.Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com2http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-things-change.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-12140695565062876902011-12-30T12:33:00.000-07:002011-12-30T12:33:17.150-07:002011-12-30T12:33:17.150-07:00Friday Notebook 12.30.11
Favorite Reading of 2011
I’ve wandered back through my notebook with eye toward making a list of books that most enlarged my perspective, tickled my fancy, and/or puzzled me in a productive way in 2011. Needless to say, the list is completely subjective and idiosyncratic. New books and old books are mixed together, and I highly recommend them all:
Poetry
Adonis, Adonis: Selected Poems Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com5http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/friday-notebook-123011.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-76253349118887743222011-12-29T09:00:00.000-07:002011-12-29T09:00:03.445-07:002011-12-29T09:00:03.445-07:00Motivated Avoidance
Published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the report shows that people who know very little about an issue—say the economic downturn, changes in the climate or dwindling fossil fuel reserves—tend to avoid learning more about it. This insulates them in their ignorance—a pattern described by researchers as "motivated avoidance."
Read the full article here.
Before Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com5http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/motivated-avoidance.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-28957958124133759522011-12-28T09:00:00.000-07:002011-12-28T09:00:02.873-07:002011-12-28T09:00:02.873-07:00Genius and Generosity
"The Bedroom at Arles"—c. 1887
I never thought I'd hear a better song about Van Gogh than Don McLean's "Vincent," then along comes Joe Henry with "Room at Arles," on his new album Reverie:
Room at Arles by Henry, Joe on Grooveshark
I still love McLean's song, of course—elegiac, lyrical ... but maybe a touch too pretty, And yet...
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Van Gogh's Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com5http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/genius-and-generosity.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-30932788715695581102011-12-27T09:00:00.000-07:002011-12-27T09:00:03.446-07:002011-12-27T09:00:03.446-07:00Panem et Circenses ReduxBill Knott's post entitled "i told you so" consists of a single link, which leads to an article in The Independent that begins this way:
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art—including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com7http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/panem-et-circenses-redux.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-72090211373670311432011-12-24T16:54:00.000-07:002011-12-24T16:54:11.012-07:002011-12-24T16:54:11.012-07:00Merry Christmas from Me and Bob Dylan!Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com4http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/merry-christmas-from-me-and-bob-dylan.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-51031893504927513912011-12-23T09:00:00.000-07:002011-12-23T09:00:06.944-07:002011-12-23T09:00:06.944-07:00Friday Notebook 12.23.11
From Last Summer to Ancient Greece
Rain in the west between us and Mount Evans
August 30, 2011
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Titian, Danaë and the Shower of Gold
(1554)
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A Discreet Purchase
Zeus bought Danaë with golden rain
and I purchase you with a gold coin.
I can't, after all, pay more than Zeus.
______________________
Macedonian poet Parmenion,
between 50 BCE and 50 CE
(tr. Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com1http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/friday-notebook-122311.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36359219.post-28796724453939512942011-12-22T18:24:00.000-07:002011-12-22T18:28:08.508-07:002011-12-22T18:28:08.508-07:00Signs of IronyGood fences make good neighbors? Not in the vicinity of Evergreen Lake....
Joseph Hutchisonhttps://profiles.google.com/115285067506770834783noreply@blogger.com0http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2011/12/signs-of-irony.html