Extra Hidden Life, among the Days

“Neither simply empirical nor transcendental, Hillman’s poetry takes what she calls ‘woodmind’—a sort of deep attention to natural processes—and applies it to notions of human action, recollection, imagination, and craft.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Brenda Hillman reminds us how surprising and delightful a poet can be when her technical skills are evenly matched with her inventive ideas.”—Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews

“Hillman seeks a median between grieving and remembering, aching and savoring, letting go and holding on…”—Craig Morgan Teicher, San Diego Tribune

“Brenda Hillman’s taxonomic and fiercely independent Extra Hidden Life, among the Days is perhaps her most radical poetry collection yet. As with her previous books, Hillman aligns personal convictions about the environment, war, and human exploitation with an aesthetic of lyric experimentation.”—Major Jackson, American Poet Magazine

“In Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days, Hillman has paved the way for an ecological occult. What exists underneath Earth, and in the cracks, is not an underworld or an afterlife but extra life.”—Elizabeth Metzger, Boston Review

“[H]er bold, experimental style…has influenced a generation of poets following in her wake.”—David Roderick, San Francisco Chronicle

“Hillman is the mind watching itself, the performance that draws its juju from multiple, simultaneous trajectories, and the outraged hothead calling out crimes against humanity and the environment.”—Forrest Gander, New York Journal of Books

“Hillman’s poetry brings to mind the expansiveness of poets from Wordsworth to Whitman to A.R. Ammons...”—Mark Jarman, The Hudson Review

“…[T]o read [Brenda Hillman] is to enter a poetry that bristles and shifts with life. Her keen attention to the natural world and our place within it, coupled with her devotion to formal innovation and commitment to confronting injustice, are reasons Extra Hidden Life, among the Days is one of the collections I’m most looking forward to this year.” —Stephen Sparks, Literary Hub

“Hillman’s strongest poems demonstrate how animals, plant life, and bacteria continually push back against society’s ills: corporations, banks, and nation-states. She is a profound poet with work that asks to be read more than once, absorbed bit by bit.”—Andrea Syzdek, Harvard Review

“Extra Hidden Life, among the Days is a necessary read, a lifeline born from Hillman's patient faith in the world.”—Amanda Ogea, FreeVerse

“Hillman's collection gestures to curiosity, openness, and an engagement with the materiality that surroundsan overlap of knowledge and creativity between the “human”and “natural” worlds.”—Connor Fisher, Colorado Review

“Few poets dwell on the cycle of life like Brenda Hillman. Her latest collection puts us in touch with nature and the passage of time, our birth and life span and death, and her approach is often playful and innovative.”—John McMurtrie, San Francisco Chronicle, “Year in review: The best books of 2018”

“This past summer Brenda Hillman and I did an event at one of my favorite indies in the country, Point Reyes Books. The night before I was camped out on the coast. My tent pitched half a mile from the decomposing body of a juvenile blue whale; its spine severed from a propeller strike. I brought Brenda's latest book to keep me company, Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, and can think of no better traveling companion. Large-hearted and strangely idiosyncratic, this book is a record of a fiercely independent mind at work, in turns song-filled and surprising. Often I think of these lines from “Poem for a National Seashore”: “By the sea the orbweaverwas bolder than the country, / it didn't see underlying leverage or hedging, / didn't seethe probably 100 trillion traded on / what is called futures while the mountain lion that // has a small future took her young through the O in / October.” The poems in Extra Hidden Life, among the Days teach us how to navigate this tumultuous time by returning us to the places that matter most––and the alternative logics they propose––where mounting losses demand both elegy and electric political engagement, prayer and praise.”—Elizabeth Rush, Longreads, “Eleven Books to Read in 2019”