Book description
The poems in Brenda Hillman's new collection, a companion volume to her
recent Death Tratates, offer a dynamic vision of a universe founded on
the tensions between light and dark , existence and non-existence, male
and female, spirit and matter. Informed in part by Gnostic concepts of
the separate soul in search of its divine origins ("spirit held by
matter"). This dualistic vision is cast in contemporary terms and
seeks resolution of these tensions through acceptance. "Hillman's
imagistic gift is great . . . but like Frost she also has a gift for
phrasing, for catching the tones of a speaker's thought"--Mark
Jarman, Hudson Review BRENDA HILLMAN is the author of Coffee, 3 A. M.
(1982), and three other books of poetry published by Wesleyan University
Press, White Dress (1985), Fortress (1989), and Death Tractates (1992).
Her work has won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award for Poetry and the
Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Prize. She teaches
at ST. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. Her other books, all published by
Wesleyan, include Cascadia (2001), Loose Sugar (1997), Death Tractates
(1992), and Fortress (1989).
