from issue 59

Unfamiliar Weather

Chris Hutchinson

The Muses’ Company

Unfamiliar Weather (The Muses’ Company) is a first book of poems by Chris Hutchinson, who isn’t so tempered in his questions but plunges into them head-first and thirsty. These poems are afflicted by rain and sometimes flooded. Though the rain may be familiar, what it brings isn’t: loneliness and lost cats, tombstones and spiders, love and a warm bed and all the resulting complications. I am surprised and also grateful for Hutchinson’s boldness. Even the ghazals aren’t spared. We are taught that poems are supposed to be so careful. But how to be careful with a life that’s messy? Unfamiliar Weather offers up poems that are an unlikely balance of fine and fierce.

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