Pieces of Air in the Epic

by Hillman, Brenda

• ISBN13: 9780819567888
• ISBN10: 0819567884
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-01
• 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

Street Corner

Thyme Suites

Reversible Wind

Air in the Epic

[half-tractate]

Green Pants & a Bamboo Flute

[untitled psalm]

The Value of Empty Protest

Doppler Effect in Diagram Three

Study of Air in Triangles

Wind Treaties

Altamont Pass

[half-tractate]

6 Components of Aristotle

White Fir Description

Statueless Architecture

The Corporate Number Rescue Album

The E in Being

[half-tractate]

On Carmerstrasse

Nine Unititled Epyllions

[interruption]

Your Fate

Echo 858

Manzinita Description

[untitled psalm]

Clouds Near San Leandro

An Oddness

Silent Reading

A Nextopia

Library Dust

Reference-Room Aura

Dust Acolytes

Fourth-Floor Hecatomb

Brittle Economics Monographs

Platonic Oxygen

Restless Auras

Dust Dialectical

Epoch of Dust

String Theory Sutra

Summer Garden

Mars Field Speaks to Vvedensky

Eyes in Aspens

Acknowledgments and Notes

About the Author

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