Hardback | |
October 4, 2022 | |
9780819500151 | |
English | |
160 | |
18 color photos, 12 b&w line drawings | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
7.00 Inches (US) | |
$26.00 USD, £19.50 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
In a Few Minutes Before Later
"[Hillman's] work is fierce but loving, risk-taking, and beautiful." —Harvard Review
An iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry.
During an enchantment in the life
Do you love a living person
absolutely? Tell them now.
In a half-unwieldy life you made, under
the hyaline sky, while the dead
drank from zigzag pools nearby,
if they saved you in your wild incapacities,
in timing of the world's harm
in a little pettiness in your own heart while others took
your madrigals in shreds to a tribunal,
when others said you should feel grateful
to be minimally adequate for the world's
triple exposure or some tired committee...
The ones who love us, how do they
break through our defenses?
We're tired today. Come back later.
Their baffled voices melting our wax walls
with a candle, the ones who understand
what being is—the glowing, the broken,
the wheels, the brave ones—
they have their courage,
you have yours,,,;
when you meet the one you love,
it is so rare. When you meet
the one who loves you, it is extremely rare.
An iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry.
During an enchantment in the life
Do you love a living person
absolutely? Tell them now.
In a half-unwieldy life you made, under
the hyaline sky, while the dead
drank from zigzag pools nearby,
if they saved you in your wild incapacities,
in timing of the world's harm
in a little pettiness in your own heart while others took
your madrigals in shreds to a tribunal,
when others said you should feel grateful
to be minimally adequate for the world's
triple exposure or some tired committee...
The ones who love us, how do they
break through our defenses?
We're tired today. Come back later.
Their baffled voices melting our wax walls
with a candle, the ones who understand
what being is—the glowing, the broken,
the wheels, the brave ones—
they have their courage,
you have yours,,,;
when you meet the one you love,
it is so rare. When you meet
the one who loves you, it is extremely rare.
About the Author
BRENDA HILLMAN (Kensington, CA) is an activist, writer, editor, and teacher. She has published ten collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press, including Practical Water, for which she won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California and as a staff poet at Community of Writers.
Endorsements
"[Hillman's] most recent books are rooted in broad social and ecological interests: 'passion' is a better term. She has invented a kind of dialogue with the earth; she writes with an intimacy and directness few equal and a magnificence of conception almost no one aspires to."—Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Morton Dauwen Zabel Award 2020)
"She is lightning 'the sea shines purple in.' With a seed bomb of words, she takes on the system... without once turning her back on lyrical splendor."—C.D. Wright, "The Book That Brenda Wrote" [from The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All]
"Thematically significant here, time dominates, as does the looming, viscerally rendered, and gorgeously obdurate natural world, both stretching out"—Library Journal, on Extra Hidden Life, among the Days
"Hillman's work will find a ready audience in poets of her own generation, as well as those younger poets following in her footsteps, in whose hands the category of 'ecopoetry' has exploded, sporelike, into countless unnamed species."—Publishers Weekly, on Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, Starred review
"She is lightning 'the sea shines purple in.' With a seed bomb of words, she takes on the system... without once turning her back on lyrical splendor."—C.D. Wright, "The Book That Brenda Wrote" [from The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All]
"Thematically significant here, time dominates, as does the looming, viscerally rendered, and gorgeously obdurate natural world, both stretching out"—Library Journal, on Extra Hidden Life, among the Days
"Hillman's work will find a ready audience in poets of her own generation, as well as those younger poets following in her footsteps, in whose hands the category of 'ecopoetry' has exploded, sporelike, into countless unnamed species."—Publishers Weekly, on Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, Starred review
Wesleyan University Press | |
Wesleyan Poetry Series | |
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|
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|
Hardback | |
October 4, 2022 | |
9780819500151 | |
English | |
160 | |
18 color photos, 12 b&w line drawings | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
7.00 Inches (US) | |
$26.00 USD, £19.50 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles by Brenda Hillman
Extra Hidden Life, among the Days
Brenda Hillman
Mar 2019
- Wesleyan University Press
$26.95 USD
- Hardback
$13.99 USD
- Electronic book text
$16.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire
Brenda Hillman
Sep 2014
- Wesleyan University Press
$24.95 USD
- Hardback
$11.99 USD
- Electronic book text
$15.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Practical Water
Brenda Hillman
Sep 2011
- Wesleyan University Press
$12.99 USD
- Electronic book text
$15.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Other Titles from Wesleyan Poetry Series
In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful
Abigail Chabitnoy
Nov 2022
- Wesleyan University Press
$25.00 USD
- Hardback
$15.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Belly to the Brutal
Jennifer Givhan
Aug 2022
- Wesleyan University Press
$15.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
$25.00 USD
- Hardback
Other Titles in POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Nature
Hounds on the Mountain
James Still
Jul 2022
- University Press of Kentucky
$14.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
$14.95 USD
- Electronic book text
$14.95 USD
- Electronic book text
In Memory of a Banyan Tree
Michael Rothenberg
Apr 2022
- Lost Horse Press
$18.00 USD
- Paperback / softback
Other Titles in Poetry by individual poets
Buffalo Dance, expanded edition
Frank X Walker
Nov 2022
- University Press of Kentucky
$19.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
$29.95 USD
- Electronic book text
$19.95 USD
- Electronic book text
{#289-128}
Randall Horton
Sep 2020
- University Press of Kentucky
$19.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
$19.95 USD
- Electronic book text
$19.95 USD
- Electronic book text
T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination
Jewel Spears Brooker
Oct 2018
- The Johns Hopkins University Press
$39.95 USD
- Hardback
$39.95 USD
- Electronic book text