A review by ktrain3900
Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman

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.