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.


PEOPLE'S EMOTIONS IN ONE CITY BLOCK

half-shame, mild joy at hope for food, gray fear of
the walk-through monument, partial love of some humans,
cold resentment at bank options, extra pride at skin color, delight
at witnessing the number heap, shame times dread needing help,
2 quasi-firm hesitations, disgust at fried eagle, half-joy
at pride after sex, deep grief plus middle deep grief, twice
terror at law enforcement, half-worry for someone not the right one,
mild anxiety about pigeons, light interest in flower salads, oblivion
about skin color, eager reckoning at the gallery, mysterious relief
about 3s, white numbness at doorway sleepers, swell of allowable rage
craving for flower salads, semi-pride after sex, love of fire enforcement
blue terror at the bank options, craving for fried eagle, post-fear
of the number heap, furious regret at auto-correct, sweetness
of the drug in the dream, pure love of the right one, rage
at the change of schedule, dark love of hope for sex, shallow wit
plus shame, dark love of trees & birds, fear of minutes, regard for
spines & thumbs, relief for the sick one, hesitant fear before joy

-for MR, Washington Square Park