In a Few Minutes Before Later

"[Hillman's] work is fierce but loving, risk-taking, and beautiful." ¿ Harvard ReviewAn iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry. During an enchantment in the lifeDo you love a living personabsolutely? Tell them now. In a half-unwieldy life you made, underthe hyaline sky, while the deaddrank from zigzag pools nearby,if they saved you in your wild incapacities,in timing of the world's harmin a little pettiness