The Disappearing Poet Blues
Marc Hudson
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2002 The poems in Marc Hudson's The Disappearing Poet Blues are driven by a moral anguish: how do we live, they ask, in strict circumstances; what is the worth of a profoundly limited human life; how can one be both a good father and a good artist? Emblematic of the poet's exile and endurance are the severe landscapes of the Okanogan in Washington State and the Colville Indian Reservation, where Hudsons brain-injured son, Ian, was born and lived his first year. Later poems reflect the familys move to Indiana, where the less austere contours of the Midwest suggest a mellowing of grief. The poems of the second section metaphorically wrestle with many of the same concerns: Caedmon, the first Anglo-Saxon Christian poet, tells of the burdens of song; an Irish monk on his volcanic outpost longs for his homecoming in Christ. Hudsons The Disappearing Poet Blues has an ethical music and weight; but ragged and uncertain and human as it is, it also sings the blues. |
About the author:
Marc Hudson teaches creative writing and medieval studies at Wabash College, where he is chair of the English Department. He is married to the scholar and writer, Helen Mundy Hudson, and has two children, Ian and Alexandra. His previous books include Afterlight, 1983 winner of the Juniper Prize and Journal for an Injured Son. He has also published Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary with the Bucknell University Press. He has received a National Endowment Fellowship in Literature for his work and his poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Poetry, Puerto del Sol, The Seattle Review, Poetry East, and other journals.
