Pieces of Air in the Epic (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Hardcover

Hillman, Brenda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819567876 ISBN 13: 9780819567871

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Innovative lyric poetry breathes new life into 21st century nature and culture.

Winner of the The Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award (2006)

In her newest poems, Brenda Hillman continues her exploration of nature and culture in ways that demonstrate her original place in experimental lyric traditions. Pieces of Air in the Epic is the second book of a tetrology that takes the elements―earth, air, water, fire―as its subject. As Hillman's previous collection, Cascadia, explores "earth," the present collection considers "air"―the many meanings of the word and the life-giving medium we breathe―to test a reality that is both political and personal.

These formally inventive poems reexamine epic and lyric, braiding fact and dream, the social with the self. Hypnotic, spare verses use air on the page as a matrix for cultural healing; some are presided over by a feminine presence and address war in human history, while others are set in streets, parks and wilderness. There are meditations on auras, dust motes, and reading in libraries as acts of restorative memory. This work fuses animist consciousness with cautionary prophecy, and belongs to the mode of H.D. and Robert Duncan. Hillman's poetry continues to explore ways in which human life might be redeemed by imagination.

About this title

About the Author

BRENDA HILLMAN is the author of seven books of poetry, all published by Wesleyan. She teaches at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California.

Reviews

Reaching for prophetic powers without abandoning small-scale details, playing with page-based form while attending to the sound of each line, Hillman's seventh book combines the big ambitions of Cascadia (2001) with the personal touch of Loose Sugar (1997): the result may be her best book yet, both as a book-length project and as a collection of freestanding poems. The "air" Hillman invokes includes human voices, breath and song, with their connotations of spirit and individuality: "People think they are you but they are not/ You are you & no one & everything." Yet by "air" the poet also refers to the atmosphere that circles the globe and carries radio signals, jet planes, and news, especially news of the war in Iraq. "Wind will rend the suburbs/ with information seeking nature," she writes; "The lost one/ is everywhere; you won't/ recover him." Making subtle use of Virgil and Homer, Hillman attends often to ethics and public events: "In the present conflict each fire equals re-used air from the cold war." Yet she returns to the mind, the individual, and the unique imprint of sounds and words, first in essayistic, philosophical poems, in ingeniously argumentative, sawtooth-shaped lines, and in a lyrical conclusions, a set of twelve short poems set in a college library where "Unchecked-out books on/ low tables keep the fragrance of/ of masks." (Sept.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819567876
• ISBN 13: 9780819567871
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 104