Pieces of Air in the Epic

by Hillman, Brenda

• ISBN13: 9780819567871
• ISBN10: 0819567876
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-26
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

ONE
Street Corner	3	(2)
Thyme Suites	5	(2)
Reversible Wind	7	(1)
Air in the Epic	8	(2)
[half-tractate]	10	(1)
Near Stations	11	(2)
Green Pants & a Bamboo Flute	13	(1)
[untitled psalm]	14	(1)
The Value of Empty Protest	15	(1)
Doppler Effect in Diagram Three	16	(3)
Study of Air in Triangles	19	(2)
Wind Treaties	21	(2)
Altamont Pass	23	(3)
[half-tractate]	26	(1)
6 Components from Aristotle	27	(4)
White Fir Description	31	(1)
Statueless Architecture	32	(2)
The Corporate Number Rescue Album	34	(4)
The E in Being	38	(2)
[half-tractate]	40	(1)
On Carmerstrasse	41	(2)
Nine Untitled Epyllions	43	(12)
TWO
[interruption]	55	(1)
Your Fate	56	(1)
Echo 858	57	(6)
Manzanita Description	63	(1)
[untitled psalm]	64	(1)
Clouds Near San Leandro	65	(3)
An Oddness	68	(1)
Silent Reading	69	(1)
A Nextopia	70	(1)
Library Dust	71	(1)
Reference-Room Aura	72	(1)
Dust Acolytes	73	(1)
Fourth-Floor Hecatomb	74	(1)
Brittle Economics Monographs	75	(1)
Platonic Oxygen	76	(1)
Restless Auras	77	(1)
Dust Dialectical	78	(1)
Epoch of Dust	79	(1)
String Theory Sutra	80	(4)
Summer Garden	84	(2)
Mars Field Speaks to Vvedensky	86	(1)
Eyes in Aspens	87	(2)
Acknowledgments and Notes	89	(2)
About the Author	91