Journalism and Poetry

Book

Disease Days: Three Long Poems

The title poem of Curt Hopkins's second book of poems was inspired by Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. He needed some way to make sense of the pandemic and his own struggle with cancer. Metatron in LA was written before, as an investigation of religion and art. Disease Days was written during as an attempt to understand and reconcile life with death and fate. The final poem, David Voyageur, is a celebration of pure imagination, along the lines of Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen.

Poet, screenwriter, and memoirist Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of Martin & Meditations on the South Valley, said of Hopkins’ verse, “these poems are usable—i mean survival stuff, for the father at the table late at night leaning into his sorrow sipping black coffee, for the urban street kid whose never been to a forest and the professor who forget his dream, or for those who been in love and betrayed, for the broken and whole, the nasty and pure, the religious and blasphemer, for those ambitious poets craving awards and money prizes, sit your asses down and read this shit, it’ll get you real....” Poet Yehuda Amichai said, “It is the kind of writing that sustains and lifts up, that nourishes for a lifetime and more.“ And Bill Rauch, first artistic director of the Perelman Center in New York, said “Hopkins’ writing made me lean forward, make connections I never would have thought possible but now seem inevitable, and to look forward in new ways.”

Love’s the forge’s spark and flash,
The hammer in our hearts, the strike and clash
That reinvents the world and alters time.
Love’s the chain and plate that guards our guts,
The prayer with which we face the fate of Pilate,
The blood or water that changes into wine.

Book

The Dog Watches and Other Poems

Curt Hopkins's first book of poems is a spiritual gazetteer of the city and its hidden spaces. Built around the long poem of the title, the book is a product of years of exploring poetic form and meter. Poet, screenwriter, and memoirist Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of Martin & Meditations on the South Valley, said “these poems are usable—i mean survival stuff, for the father at the table late at night leaning into his sorrow sipping black coffee, for the urban street kid whose never been to a forest and the professor who forget his dream, or for those who been in love and betrayed, for the broken and whole, the nasty and pure, the religious and blasphemer, for those ambitious poets craving awards and money prizes, sit your asses down and read this shit, it’ll get you real....” Poet Yehuda Amichai said, “It is the kind of writing that sustains and lifts up, that nourishes for a lifetime and more.“ And Bill Rauch, first artistic director of the Perelman Center, said “Hopkins’ writing made me lean forward, make connections I never would have thought possible but now seem inevitable, and to look forward in new ways.”