Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire

Starred review from July 22, 2013
Hillman’s fast-moving, energetic, and ample 10th collection blazes with indignation, gathers together motifs as for mass demonstration, and blazes among its topics. The last of four books based on the ancient elements (most recently, Practical Water), its one-page lyrics connect the origins of the Roman alphabet, children’s reading habits, topical cries against our present-day wars, the evils of genetically modified seeds, the structure of Greek tragedy (“Tiny first with hurt earth spirits/ as in Aeschylus”), prose essays on poetry and protest, daily life on a West Coast campus, and larger-scale objections to the way that human beings have treated the earth. “We intend to make some changes,” writes Hillman; “We hope to learn to breathe before we die.” That hope infuses and fuels the many associative leaps and jagged lines that surround it: “Around each word you’re reading/ there spins the unknowable flame.” Twelve poems in bifurcated lines, each a tribute to her mother, or to a mother, conclude the volume on a trustworthy note: “some are torn as in modernism/ some are stained.” Hillman’s fierce works can feel uncontrolled, or hastily assembled, but they can also feel Romantic in the very best sense, like prophecies: “Out in the dark, the diamond planet orbits the companion star as art circles the unnamable.”

August 1, 2013

Hillman's ninth collection is also the fourth and final book in the poet's imaginative series on the elements after Cascadia (earth), Pieces of Air in the Epic (air), and Practical Water (water). The metaphor's finale, featuring fire, is visually intriguing, with a variety of poetic styles, fonts, and images, but ultimately disappointing. She takes on the difficult task of composing lines based on political themes, referencing drones and the Occupy movement. But concision and music are too often missing--"I'm grateful to Samuel Beckett & to my high school boyfriend whose drunk/ father yelled when we closed the door & read The Unnamable during the Tet/ offensive." Another distraction is the poet's tendency to be too self-referential--"As a heron stalks the smart frog, / time stabs the mini-brenda"; "Big oil has bought everything but not my/ armpits, which are sweating in solidarity with the Commons before the/ 18th century Enclosure Acts." Hillman's poetic techniques--disjointed syntax, the breaking of words into syllables, startling images--create poems that are too often prosaic with images that are hard to envision. The poems that work best incorporate a sense of wordplay--"the vowel of an owl/ the owl of a vowel/ dives onto a warm body..."; it doesn't make sense but at least it delights. VERDICT Despite the importance of Hillman's subject matter--the fate of our country, the state of our world--too many poems miss the mark, resulting in an uninspiring collection. The reader's companion may be a good place to start with this collection: brendahillman.site.wesleyan.edu.--Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

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