Reviews

Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman

seapeanut's review

Pieces of Air in the Epic (Wesleyan Poetry) by Brenda Hillman (2005)

ktrain3900's review

2.0

I'm honestly not sure about this one. There are moments of beautiful imagery, well crafted columnar poems, a fine merging of politics and art sacrificing neither, yet so much remains inscrutable. It's very intelligent, and the personal here is political and vice versa, but even in moments of intimacy there's a distance, an aloofness. Much remains abstract and I have a hard time locating myself in abstraction. I reach to something I think I should like to hold but it's not there, or it keeps moving from my hand. I suppose in that way it does embody the element of air; I'm more at home in the earth of Cascadia. Two and a half stars.

pyrrhicspondee's review

4.0

Remember when Marie Howe made us buy this book (and a host of others) and then we never read any of them except for Tony Hoagland? Well, I finally read it. I can safely and sadly say that this is a book I should read again. Hillman: a little complicated. She necessitated a dictionary at my side.

I doubt I'll read the whole thing again. But Hillman has this series of poems that takes place in a library and talks all about the air and the dust motes inside. I think it is just how I feel about libraries and their smell. Those poems I will definitely read again (and again).

Word worth sharing from the book: hecatomb, a great public sacrifice of 100 oxen.